Nio thinks exchangeable batteries are now possible

You are going through an exciting time, may I assume?

“Norway will be our first market outside of China, making it a pilot for Nio. We started preparations last March, which was the start of months of hard work. Nevertheless, Nio is already very international. Our design center is in Munich, our software comes from Silicon Valley and the drive was developed in Oxford.”

How will you approach this new market?

“We want to create a complete ecosystem around the users. You should see this in our Power Department, for example, which makes Nio unique. Think of Swap Stations (exchange stations where the empty battery is automatically replaced by a full one in five minutes, ed.), but also the community that we build online and offline with our Nio Houses (see box, ed.). All this makes Nio special in the automotive industry, where many brands still focus on the car. We focus on the user. William Li (CEO and founder of Nio, ed.) said to me: ‘Marius, put the brand down. Numbers don’t matter that much.’ So if you ask me what our sales target is for next year, I say: we’ll see.”

But there will be money to be made, right?

“In the end yes. But first the brand has to stand and service and processes have to be right, then sales will come.”

Nio Norway CEO Marius Hayler

Where should we place Nio in the playing field of existing brands?

“I can say a lot about that, but let’s see what the press has written so far about our first model, the ES8. He compared the quality with brands such as BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi. It is a premium car, also in terms of performance. Mind you: those are not my words, but those of journalists. I am of course very happy with that.”

Earlier, Better Place and Renault tried the Battery Swap idea, but that initiative bled to death. What does Nio do to make it successful?

“The idea has always been good, but only now is the time suitable for it. That wasn’t the case then. Norway, like the Netherlands, has become a mature EV market. About 70 percent of newly registered cars in Norway are electric (ultimately 65 percent in 2021, ed.). In such a market, users have to be part of the continued development of batteries. Swap Stations play an important role in this. With an ordinary EV, you are in fact tied to the battery for the entire life of your car, while our exchange system allows you to grow along with the further development. I think the Norwegians would like that.

But it is of course complementary. Every Nio driver gets a home charger and you can also quickly charge. Most riders will mainly charge at home, but on long journeys a Swap Station can be a solution. These exchange stations are mainly intended to upgrade your battery. Or even to downgrade your battery, when your circumstances change and you need a smaller, and therefore less heavy and less expensive battery. If you then have to make a long trip, you can temporarily get a larger battery for that trip. This offers the owner great flexibility. The aim is to have twenty exchange stations in Norway by the end of next year, but we already have six hundred in China. Our BaaS, Battery as a Service, is also part of this. We thought long and hard about whether we should sell the cars including the battery or whether we should offer the battery with it in a lease construction. We have decided to leave the choice to the customer. Until now, almost everyone has opted for BaaS.”

Nio ES8

Norway has the European first. Who follow?

“Germany will be next in the fourth quarter next year and after that we will explore other countries.”

The ES8 is a very large car, the ET7, which comes second to Europe, is also very large. Now Europe is especially strong in more compact cars, and Nio has those too. Why the largest models first?

“We are debuting the ES8 here because Norway loves big cars. Norwegians like to go out with the family on weekends, which makes large SUVs very popular here.”