Nio Completes 1.19 Million Battery Swaps in China's National Day Week, Setting Two Daily Records

Nio's battery swap network completed 1,192,221 swaps between October 1 and 7, a record for a single holiday week, according to a company report published on October 9. The daily average rose about 22 percent from the same holiday last year, and the busiest day set a new single-day record (CnEVPost, CleanTechnica).

The headline numbers

Nio, October 1 to 7, 2026	Figure
Battery swaps	1,192,221 (daily average up about 22%)
Swap stations	4,168
Charging and swap services	2,071,582 across 9,567 stations (daily average up 20.5%)
October 1 swaps	183,469 (record at the time)
October 5 swaps	183,664 (new record)
Previous record	177,627 on February 22, Spring Festival
Labor Day holiday (May)	1,031,469 swaps over 7 days; daily peak 170,585

The figures cover Nio's three brands, Nio, Onvo and Firefly, and are company statistics that have not been independently audited. At the peak, Nio says a car finished a swap and drove off roughly every 0.47 seconds across the network.

Highways did the heavy lifting

Nio's highway stations supplied more than 24.83 million kWh, up 30.8 percent year on year and 13.7 percent of the nationwide highway total. The 1,073 highway swap stations link more than 550 cities, and 250 of them set a daily swap record during the week. The busiest single station was at the Rizhao service area on the G15 expressway in Shandong, peaking at 211 swaps in a day. Nio says highway stations saved users more than 309,124 hours of waiting, up 14.7 percent, though it has not explained how that figure is calculated. A single swap takes three to five minutes.

Road trips on swapped batteries

The report addresses the worry that swapping suits city driving better than long trips. Nio says 203,581 users relied entirely on swapping for holiday journeys; 197,684 of them covered more than 1,000 km over the holiday (up 65.1 percent), and 127,542 drove more than 500 km in a single day (up 74.6 percent). Users of the three brands drove over 714 million km in total.

Smaller towns are catching up: swap stations now cover more than 1,300 districts and counties, and swap orders in county towns rose 144.2 percent. Cumulative charging sessions passed 100 million on October 3, and vehicles from outside the Nio group account for 86.69 percent of the electricity its chargers deliver (Drive Tesla Canada).

What Nio is building next

Nio finished its Silk Road swap route on September 26, a 3,605 km corridor from Xi'an to Horgos with 33 stations, and aims to open 100 scenic routes with charging and swap coverage in 2026. Its navigate-on-swap feature was used 105,403 times in September, 24.7 percent of swap orders at stations where it was available.

What to watch next

Whether the daily record survives the Spring Festival rush in early 2027, whether Nio publishes queue times alongside volumes, and how fast the county-town network grows.

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