Got the chance to be 1/100 insider to try out the first Gen4 battey swap station in Shanghai. The experience has evolved to a new level. It takes less than 3 minutes to swap the battery, 20% faster than that of Gen3 station.
Good job. Thanks for the update! Simple and to the point. This will probably be the industry standard for battery swapping. Are you at all concern about queue wait times? Especially as compatible non-NIO brands start to use them more -Washington State, USA
TBH, I did have concerns at the beginning when I got to know Gen3 and Gen4 will be shared with ONVO, and Gen4 will be shared with all othe brands, but no more. First of first, infrastructure really matters. There will be 1,000 Gen4 stations available by the end of this year, each of them features a 23-battery capacity. The algorithm behind it is well planned, so even battery is not interchangeable between NIO, ONVO, and other brands, one would never have issue about battery shortage! Then for the next couple years with more and more new vehicles flushed into battery swap network, and say 0 new station has been built up, and round up each battery swap order to 5 minutes, then you would expect long as 60 minutes lead time if there are 12 vehicles ahead. However, keeps in mind that NIO is a tech company first. The dynamic stat is all on the network, you can alsways decide which station to go to if you see a long queue on the app. In fact, the app will show how many orders are in line, and how many potential users are heading to the station, so you will have the ability to choose wise accordingly. Personally, at this stage, the longest wait time for me was 20 minutes for 4 orders ahead in a busy rainy cold winter night.
