Chinese electric car manufacturer Nio will offer their Nio ES8, ES6 and EC6 models without a battery and allow owners to rent one instead. The big advantage here is that it will reduce the initial purchase cost by an incredible £7600 ($10,000 /€8,500), and then rent a battery for a monthly rate of around £110 ($140/€120) for a 70 kWh battery.
Nio have partnered with battery manufacturer and technology company
Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Limited (CATL) and two other partners to create the Battery Asset Company to provide this service to their customers. Each has invested around 21 million pounds and the Battery Asset Company will buy the batteries and lease them through the BaaS business model with CATL supplying the cells.
Nio also have 143 battery exchange stations around China where owners can swap spent battery packs for completely charged replacements. The BaaS scheme now covers 64 cities in China, and Nio claims it completed over 800,000 battery swaps.
Nio’s chief executive, William Li, said: “We believe with BaaS more customers of gasoline cars will consider electric vehicles. Nio are building a new battery-swapping station in China every week and plan to build 300 new stations next year.”
