Chinese electric vehicle (EV) maker Nio said it will not construct exclusive battery swap stations for its newly launched Firefly brand, marking a strategic change in the company’s infrastructure development plans for its third automotive brand.
Firefly, which unveiled its first model on April 19 with deliveries scheduled to begin later this month, will instead rely on Nio’s upcoming fifth-generation battery swap stations, which will also support vehicles under the Nio and Onvo brands.
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“Therefore, we decided to have the Firefly plugged into Nio’s fifth generation of battery swap stations,” said Daniel Jin, president of Firefly, during a local media interview. Jin noted that while a dedicated, compact containerized battery swap station had been developed earlier in the project, the company ultimately determined it was not feasible to construct a separate network for a single model.
According to Nio CEO William Li, the company initially considered building “a dozen to 20” demonstration battery swap stations exclusively for Firefly. However, he said the approach was deemed inefficient. “We now believe that building exclusive battery swap stations for Firefly is not cost-effective,” Li told reporters.
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Firefly customers will instead receive a one-time charging subsidy of RMB 3,000 yuan ($410), which the company says equates to approximately two years of free charging based on the model’s energy consumption. “With this entitlement, we want to tell people that they don’t need to wait for battery swap stations to buy a Firefly now,” Jin added.
Nio also confirmed that a Battery-as-a-Service (BaaS) purchase option will be available to Firefly customers starting August 1.
See also: Nio Officially Launches Firefly EV with RMB 119,800 Starting Price and April 29 Delivery Date
Earlier this year, Nio announced a partnership with CATL to jointly develop what it described as the world’s largest battery swap network. Firefly’s future models will be built to support CATL’s Choco-Swap technology standard.
The Firefly brand is positioned as Nio’s most affordable offering, with the first model starting at RMB 119,800 ($16,410), including the battery pack.