Nio's Holiday Swap Network Hit 41 Swaps a Station a Day, Up From 39 in 2025

Nio's battery-swap network completed 1,192,221 swaps from Oct. 1 to 7, which is about 41 swaps per station per day across 4,168 stations, up from about 39 a year earlier.

The figures come from Nio's National Day holiday report, as relayed by CnEVPost on Oct. 9. Nio set a daily record twice: 183,469 swaps on Oct. 1, then 183,664 on Oct. 5, the return-travel peak, beating the 177,627 it logged on Feb. 22. Electrek rounded the week to 1.2 million and called it proof that swapping works; the figures are Nio's own and nobody outside the company has audited them.

Why 41 swaps a station a day is the number to watch

The headline total mostly measures how many stations Nio built. The number that matters here is not 1.19 million but swaps per station per day, because that is what tells you whether the new stations are busy or merely present.

Nio reported 4,168 stations for the 2026 holiday. Its report for the same holiday in 2025 listed 3,520 stations and 1,097,985 swaps over eight days, Oct. 1 to 8. The 2026 holiday ran seven days. Dividing out both the days and the stations gives the table below; the station counts are the ones each report published, not an average over the period, so the per-station figures are approximate.

Period	Swaps	Days	Stations	Swaps per station per day
May Day 2026	1,031,469	7	3,839	38.4
National Day 2025	1,097,985	8	3,520	39.0
National Day 2026	1,192,221	7	4,168	40.9

1. May Day 202638.4 swaps
2. National Day 202539 swaps
3. National Day 202640.9 swaps

Source: Author's arithmetic from Nio holiday reports published by CnEVPost, accessed 2026-10-10

Stations grew 18.4 percent from 3,520 to 4,168 between the two October holidays. Per-day swaps grew faster, from about 137,248 to about 170,317. Utilisation per station rose roughly 5 percent in a year, so the new stations are not diluting the old ones.

The 22 percent growth claim has no named baseline

CnEVPost reports that Nio put the daily average swap volume up 22 percent year on year. The report as relayed does not say which 2025 days it compares against.

Using only Nio's published 2025 totals, 170,317 swaps a day against 137,248 is an increase of 24.1 percent. The 2025 total spans eight days and the 2026 one seven, so a like-for-like comparison would need the daily 2025 series, which the report does not publish. The two figures are close enough that a different window probably explains the gap, but that is an inference.

What 183,664 in one day implies about the busiest stations

Nio's report says that at peak a vehicle completed a swap and left every 0.47 seconds on average across the network. That checks out: 86,400 seconds divided by 183,664 swaps is 0.470.

The report also names the busiest highway station: Rizhao service area on the G15 in Shandong, with a daily peak of 211 swaps. That is one swap every 6.8 minutes for 24 hours. Electrek says a driver leaves with a fresh battery in three to five minutes. If that holds, 211 swaps means 10.5 to 17.6 hours of occupied swap time in a day, which makes the number of swap bays at that site the missing variable. The report does not give it.

Nio counts 1,073 highway swap stations, connecting more than 550 cities, and says 250 stations set their own daily records. Its report also says 203,581 users relied entirely on swapping for holiday road trips.

What would change my read is daily swap counts by station for the 2025 holiday. If the 2025 week was front-loaded, the 22 percent claim and the 24.1 percent calculation could both be right; if it was flat, utilisation grew less than the table suggests.

Nio's report sets a target of 100 scenic routes with charging and swap coverage in 2026. Its most recent completed route, announced as finished on Sept. 26, runs 3,605 km from Xi'an to Horgos with 33 swap stations. For context on who owns the network now, see Geely's purchase of 30 percent of Nio's swap business, and for the competing approach, Sunwoda's flash-charging battery.