In 2018, Nio opened its first battery swap station. Eight years later, the network has grown to 4,000 stations. But the company that spent billions building them is now letting others use them. According to a commentary by Zhan Mo Tian Mo, published on the Chinese outlet Huxiu, this shift reflects a broader pattern in infrastructure history: what starts as a closed, proprietary system often must open up to survive.
Nio's swap stations were designed to serve Nio cars exclusively. The vehicles, battery packs, mechanical interfaces, and software were all built in-house. That tight integration made the system efficient. But by 2026, the strategy changed. Geely took a stake in Nio Energy, and Yiyi Lianwang's fleet swap business was folded into Nio's network. Several other automakers have also signed cooperation deals with Nio on battery swap.
Why exclusive systems stop working
The reason is economic. A proprietary network works well when the parent company's sales grow fast enough to keep the infrastructure busy. But once the network expands faster than the car business, idle capacity becomes a problem. Nio's 4,000 stations represent a huge sunk cost. To justify that investment, the stations need more users - including cars from other brands.
History shows the same pattern. In the 19th century, European countries built their own telegraph networks. Cross-border messages had to pass through different systems with different rules and fees. In 1865, 20 nations met in Paris and signed the International Telegraph Convention, creating the forerunner of today's International Telecommunication Union. They unified standards to make the networks interoperable.
Railways went through a similar phase. Different gauges meant trains could not cross from one line to another. In the 1880s, US southern railroads converted to standard gauge to connect with the northern network. The lesson: network infrastructure cannot rely on incompatibility as a competitive advantage forever.
Openness as the next step
For Nio, opening the swap network to other brands is not just about filling capacity. It also spreads the cost of developing standards for battery swap (a system where depleted batteries are exchanged for charged ones in minutes). Nio has already signed agreements with automakers such as Changan and Geely to share its swap technology. The deal with Yiyi Lianwang, which operates swap stations for commercial vehicles, expands the network into the fleet segment.
The move mirrors what Tesla did with its Supercharger network in Europe and North America - initially exclusive, later opened to other EVs. For Nio, the challenge is to maintain service quality while integrating vehicles with different battery sizes and communication protocols. But as the company's own sales growth slows relative to its infrastructure expansion, sharing may be the only way to make the network pay.
