- Nio, a Chinese electric car company, has revealed a new battery capable of powering a vehicle for over 1,000km on a single charge.
- The breakthrough battery is set to enter mass production in April 2024.
- Nio’s CEO demonstrated the battery’s capability by driving an electric vehicle 1,044km during a 14-hour live stream.
- The company’s battery-swap system allows for quick and easy battery replacement.
A Chinese electric car company, Nio, has shown off a new battery that can make a car go more than 1,000 kilometers on just one charge. Nio, which is based in Shanghai, says this new battery will start being made in April 2024. They say it will give cars a longer range than any other electric or fuel-powered car you can buy right now.
The boss of Nio, William Li, drove one of their electric cars, called the ET7, for 1,044 kilometers in one go. He did this during a live video on a Chinese social media site called Weibo. He drove from one province in China to another, which took about 14 hours. The car went at an average speed of 84 kilometers per hour. In another test, they say the battery made a car go even further, 1,145 kilometers, but they didn’t show it on video.
Mr. Li said on Weibo, “This shows how good our new battery is. It’s the best battery you can get right now, and it’s really safe. Plus, if you already have one of our cars, you can upgrade to this new battery easily.”
Nio charges their cars in a different way compared to the other electric car companies. Instead of plugging the car in to charge it up, they have something called a battery-swap system. This means if the battery in your car runs out, you can swap it with a fully charged one in just three minutes. That’s about as long as it takes to fill up a regular car with fuel.
You can buy a Nio car without a battery and then pay a monthly fee to use the batteries they have. The boss of Nio said, “We think this is a better way to do things, and we want other car companies to use our system too.”
The boss also said that if you want to buy the new battery outright, it will cost about 298,000 yuan (41451.65 USD). That’s about the same as the price of a Tesla Model 3, another electric car. So, they think most people should use their battery-swap system.
Nio started doing battery swaps right from the start, and they want other companies to use their technology too. They’ve already done more than 32 million battery swaps for people, and they have more than 2,000 places where you can swap batteries all around the world.
