Nio builds a battery swap station right next to a Tesla Supercharger

Nio is ramping up its electric vehicle infrastructure effort in China and it is building battery swap stations.

The startup even built one right next to a Tesla Supercharger – creating a little glimpse into the future.

With only a handful of EV startups actually delivering vehicles, Nio is emerging as one of the most serious EV startups.

Last month, they announced that they delivered 3,350 ES8s, their electric SUV, since starting production this summer.

Now they want to support their growing fleet with electric vehicle infrastructure.

China already has some massive public charging station plans, but Nio wants to also have its own services.

They have deployed things like mobile charging stations inside electric vans and they also want to have battery swap stations.

Several companies tried and failed at battery swapping. Tesla had a battery swap system that they seemingly abandoned.

NIO has a very similar battery swap system, which they claim can autonomously replace a battery pack on the ES8 in about 3 minutes.

They want to deploy 1,100 battery swapping stations by 2020 and one of the first ones is going up right next to a Tesla Supercharger station.