Ngimanene na Muchere
Elder Lister
I think sometime here someone once proposed that Nio EV battery swapis a game changer since they have swapped 1M batteries by March, and I said its not feasible long-term.
The flaws in the Nio swap model are:
1. They already have 50,000 EV on lifetime free battery swap. That's foregone revenue for life, and these are people on your balance sheet.
2. Costs of setting up a battery swap station vs Charging Station. It costs about 2M RMB for a swap station, while elec costs is 1RMB per kwh, so a swap in a 70Kwh Nio EV would cost about 70RMB and they give 6 FREE swaps a month, x whatever number of cars they'll have on the road. See that liability piling up on your balance sheet.
If a station does about 90 swaps a day, and they currently have 170 stations spread through out, do the math.
90swaps x 70RMB electricity fee x 170 swapstation x 365days = 391M RMB in electricity costs, and this is scaling with more Nio EVs on the road.
3. Evolution in battery technology. Any battery technology that Nio develops will make their existing batteries depreciate much faster, and guess on who's balance sheet that is? And owners will want the new battery tech in their cars.
4. Cost of operations. Those battery swap stations need to be manned, and that's an increase in operational costs unnecessarily. They people manning them, at least 2 need to be on payroll, while on charging stations there are none.
My thoughts it's this is a marketing gimmick to get people to buy the cars, but soon enough will either be scrapped altogether or made a paid service. Those with free battery swap will transition to free fast charging, everyone else has to pay.
The flaws in the Nio swap model are:
1. They already have 50,000 EV on lifetime free battery swap. That's foregone revenue for life, and these are people on your balance sheet.
2. Costs of setting up a battery swap station vs Charging Station. It costs about 2M RMB for a swap station, while elec costs is 1RMB per kwh, so a swap in a 70Kwh Nio EV would cost about 70RMB and they give 6 FREE swaps a month, x whatever number of cars they'll have on the road. See that liability piling up on your balance sheet.
If a station does about 90 swaps a day, and they currently have 170 stations spread through out, do the math.
90swaps x 70RMB electricity fee x 170 swapstation x 365days = 391M RMB in electricity costs, and this is scaling with more Nio EVs on the road.
3. Evolution in battery technology. Any battery technology that Nio develops will make their existing batteries depreciate much faster, and guess on who's balance sheet that is? And owners will want the new battery tech in their cars.
4. Cost of operations. Those battery swap stations need to be manned, and that's an increase in operational costs unnecessarily. They people manning them, at least 2 need to be on payroll, while on charging stations there are none.
My thoughts it's this is a marketing gimmick to get people to buy the cars, but soon enough will either be scrapped altogether or made a paid service. Those with free battery swap will transition to free fast charging, everyone else has to pay.
