Nio's car is capable of battery swapping. There is a swap station and a robotic arm take out the battery from your car a change a new one in 3 mins. What is int

Nio's car is capable of battery swapping. There is a swap station and a robotic arm take out the battery from your car a change a new one in 3 mins. What is interesting is that they have this program where when you buy a car, you don't buy the battery, you pay a price for the car, then a subscription fee for the battery. And then you can do unlimited free changes at these battery stations. The idea is that you use the entire battery like "fuel". You don't care the ownership of a battery. They make sure the battery is always healthy and full of charge. It also allow you to upgrade to a bigger capacity battery on your car just buy changing a tier in the subscription. Back then nio cars were launched with 75kw battery. Now users can upgrade their car to a 100kw battery by changing a tier of the sub on their phone and pay more monthly fee. Oh you can also downgrade the tier too, say you don't need the single charge range of the 100kw, you can switch to the 75kw and have lower per month fee. China population mostly live in dense apartments, and many old apartments cannot be retrofited with car chargers. This is vastly different from the US where people live in houses. This system allow nio cars to be used like gas cars. And if your swap speed is fast, you don't need as many "energy refill" stations. The way I see it, it's really hard to get ev charging speed equal to gas refills. But it's not technically difficult to a build a robot that changes out battery fast. There was another car company that made a prototype battery change station that can swap battery in 1 mins. And you can always charge the battery as well. So fast charging, destination charging, at home charging for the capable. The combination is able to cover more scenarios and more flexibility. I think it will be interesting to see how this system gets developed in the future. See if it could work well. It will bring a new solution to this industry problem. So far, it seems to work well for both nio and consumers.