Battery change with a Nio ET7, how does it work in practice?

It’s an exciting experiment: with the Nio ET7, the large electric sedan from the Chinese startup, from Hamburg to Oslo and back again without having to pick up a charging cable. That equates to a distance of 2,150 kilometers without charging. Excuse me? No electric car offers such a range. The ET7 has a maximum driving range of 505 kilometers, but Nio has already set up thirteen battery exchange stations in Europe. You can simply drive in there, have the battery replaced automatically and drive away again, a process that is completely automatic. Nio promises that the battery change will only take five minutes.

The route from Hamburg to Oslo and back.

Nomi is not familiar with Power Swap Station in Denmark

A changing station has also recently been taken into use in Denmark. “Navigate me to the Power Swap Station in Slagelse”, we say to Nomi, Nio’s language assistant, but even she doesn’t know the station yet. A little later we set off with a fully charged 100-kWh battery, with an indicated range of 503 kilometers. The exchange station is 372 kilometers away. That should work, especially since you can’t drive fast in Scandinavia anyway.

Nio ET7 fully loaded at departure in Hamburg.

Battery-as-a-Service

If you order a Nio ET7, you can choose the BaaS option: ‘Battery as a Service’. This means that you do not buy the battery, but that you take out a subscription to it. You can of course charge it with a cable, but you can also exchange it in a few minutes at one of the exchange stations. Theoretically, we should be able to drive to Oslo via Denmark and Sweden with two changes.

Problem: guest user

The ride starts very boring, on the A7 towards Flensburg. We do not drive faster than 130 km / h in the ET7 (four-wheel drive, 653 hp, price from €84,900 including battery, from €72,900 without battery). We take the opportunity to try out the driving assistants, which work great thanks to lidar, radar and camera technology. We arrive in Slagelse, 100 kilometers from Copenhagen, with 59 kilometers of remaining range. The exchange station is located behind construction fences at the end of a parking lot. Now the first problem arises. Because we are registered as a ‘guest’ in the car, we can request a battery via our app, but the automatic exchange does not work.

Battery change manually via Nio personnel, but wrong battery

Since Nio staff are still manning the stations, a friendly Dane tells me that he will change my battery manually, i.e. via the touchscreen at the station. We have to park the car ourselves in the garage. Normally the car does this autonomously. Initially, the change does not work, and when we want to take a coat out of the car and open the door, the system freezes completely. There is a moment of panic, because the 12-volt battery has to last. We lose an hour. When the new battery is finally in, we drive off quickly and notice too late that something is wrong. The replacement battery is always only 90 percent charged, so that would equate to an increase in range of about 450 kilometers. Our suspicions are confirmed: we accidentally received a 75-kWh battery. And with that we will not reach the Power Swap Station in Varberg in Sweden. That means that we have to connect the charging cable just after Malmö. Experiment failed? Yes, initially yes.

Nio ET7 still on the charger because a 75 kWh battery had been inserted.

The following problem presents itself in Varberg: the service employee can only manually change the battery back from 75 to 100 kWh. It’s dark by the time he’s done. Because of all the delays we reluctantly decide to leave Oslo for what it is and we cover the remaining 70 kilometers to Gothenburg.

Tomorrow we will make another attempt on the way back. Around nine o’clock in the morning we are back in Varberg. We had reserved the exchange battery when we left Gothenburg and now, a few hundred meters before we arrive at the exchange station, a voice in the car confirms that everything is ready for our arrival. We park the ET7 at the garage and start automatic parking on the touchscreen. Then we press ‘Start battery change’ again and it all works flawlessly. After six minutes and forty seconds we continue driving with a new battery and we arrive at the switch station in Denmark without any problems.

Varying result

But here comes another problem. Our Nio ET7 performs a ‘self-inspection’, which shows that there is a hitch in the software. After twelve minutes we leave the garage and again order the battery to be replaced. Now everything works perfectly and the entire process takes only five minutes and 40 seconds. We have a new range of 454 kilometers, which should be sufficient for the 372 kilometer drive back to Hamburg. It’s just enough. And that while we don’t drive slowly along the way, because where allowed, we drive 130 km / h. Consumption is more than acceptable: 20.9 kWh per 100 kilometers. With four percent range left, we are back at our starting point after 1,536 kilometers. Gothenburg-Hamburg without loading was a special experience, with varying results. Nevertheless, the experiment was overall a success.

In China, batteries are changed millions of times every year, in Europe this only happens at thirteen stations. There are also Nio fast charging stations at seven locations.

Norway:

Lillehammer winch Vestby Stavanger
Sweden:

Mjolby Varberg
Denmark:

Slagelse
The Netherlands:

Utrecht Apeldoorn Den Hoorn Tilburg
Germany:

Hilden Zusmarshausen