Batter Swap is "Olympic gold medal"

William Li, the founder and chairman of NIO, who "has been thinking about some ultimate solutions for electric cars since 2012" but has become the "least lucky man" in the industry in 2019, has played a beautiful game with his conviction and perseverance. Turn over the battle, ushering in a new high light moment in life. A few days ago, William Li accepted an interview with Battery China and talked freely around the hot topic of power change at present.

William Li said that many people have a misunderstanding about the relationship between power exchange and charging, and feel that the two are opposed to each other, which is not the case. Charging is the foundation, and NIO's car also prioritizes the use of charging, and the proportion of NIO's charging piles installed is also very high, up to about 70%. "Our ultra-charging piles in NIO are very useful, close to more than 300,000 third-party charging piles of National Grid, Star Charging, and Special Call." William Li said.

Of course, in William Li's view, there is no doubt that power switching has its special advantages in many scenarios. For example, high-speed station or home without charging piles, in the more densely populated, more dense car, cloth a power exchange station can serve hundreds of thousands of car owners, the efficiency is very high. So power exchange and charging cannot be opposed to each other.

"Just like the entrance exams, we have standard exams, and the Olympic gold medal plus points, you understand the power exchange as 'Olympic gold medal plus points' on it, which is actually nothing to argue about. Isn't it nice to have charging facilities coming up? It's convenient for everyone, we call it rechargeable and interchangeable, it's not that it's bad that it can only be recharged or that it can only be interchanged and not recharged." William Li joked.

However, a problem that needs to be faced with the electricity-changing model is that due to the relatively large initial capital investment, it is difficult to make a profit before the scale effect is achieved, which requires a balance between investment and return. In this regard, William Li believes that all of the innovative service models have this problem. There is no business that comes up to make money, there is no such business all over the world, all have to go through an investment period first.

"Not only is the exchange station, but charging piles also have this problem, but the Internet also had this problem back then, such as Jingdong's logistics system, all have a want to invest first, let the user enjoy a good experience, and then the scale-up on the line. Last year, our switching station felt like nothing was being used, and this year it started to line up, which is actually the truth, it has a process." William Li further talked about it.

William Li said that in the short term, NIO is not doing the power switch as a profitable thing, but as a cost and expense to consider, and did not separately calculate when to make a profit. He talked about how for NIO, power exchange is just like the company's treasury, how to say how the treasury is profitable? Unless a third-party service is provided, it still has to be included in the company's overall operations; NIO is doing it more from a service user perspective.