Nio Logs Nearly 1.2 Million Battery Swaps During China's 7-Day Holiday, Breaking Daily Record Twice

Nio’s holiday travel data has landed, and the numbers underline just how central battery swapping has become to the company’s identity. Across the first seven days of October, the automaker’s network of 4,168 swap stations handled 1,192,221 exchanges, with the daily average climbing 22 percent compared to the same holiday window a year earlier.

The peak arrived at the worst possible moment for any network: the return rush. On October 5, swaps hit 183,664 — a fresh single-day high, edging past the 183,469 recorded on October 1, when the holiday began. Nio framed the throughput in striking terms, noting that at the busiest point a car completed a swap and pulled away roughly every 0.47 seconds. The previous benchmark of 177,627 had stood since February’s Spring Festival migration peak.

The holiday also served as a stress test for the broader replenishment business. Combining charging and swapping, Nio’s 9,567 combined sites delivered 2,071,582 services over the seven days, a daily average up 20.5 percent year-on-year. Figures span all three of the company’s brands — Nio, Onvo and Firefly. Long-distance capability came into focus too: alongside 1,073 highway swap stations linking over 550 cities, highway facilities supplied more than 24.83 million kWh, an increase of 30.8 percent and 13.7 percent of the nationwide highway total. Nio says its highway stations spared drivers over 309,124 hours of waiting to recharge, with 250 individual stations posting their own daily records. The busiest was a site at the Rizhao service area on the G15 Shenyang-Haikou Expressway, which peaked at 211 swaps in a day.

Adoption patterns suggest swapping is no longer a niche convenience. Some 203,581 drivers relied solely on battery exchanges throughout their trips, while 127,542 covered more than 500 kilometers in a single day — a 74.6 percent jump. Customers across the three brands collectively drove over 714 million kilometers during the break. More telling for the company’s geographic reach, swap orders in county towns surged 144.2 percent from the prior period, and the network now touches more than 1,300 districts and counties.

Nio’s charging footprint is shared far beyond its own vehicles, with external brands taking 86.69 percent of the electricity dispensed across 5,399 charging stations and 31,091 points; cumulative charging sessions passed the 100 million mark on October 3. Infrastructure keeps growing: a Silk Road swap corridor stretching 3,605 kilometers from Xi’an to Horgos, anchored by 33 stations, was completed in late September, and Nio now claims drivers can traverse every mainland provincial-level region using swaps alone. It is targeting 100 scenic routes with charging and swap coverage in 2026. Meanwhile, the company’s navigate-on-swap assist was triggered 105,403 times in September, accounting for 24.7 percent of orders where the feature exists.