ONVO, like its parent NIO, offers battery swapping to owners who choose that route instead of fully buying the battery pack with the car. Its battery swapping network keeps growing fast, despite claims for years that it couldn’t work. Many NIO and ONVO drivers appreciate having the ability to quickly swap out a battery rather than charge it up.
Because the battery swap takes just 5 minutes.
But this offers another unique opportunity — drivers can switch from a smaller battery to a larger one at any time and pay a bit more monthly if they so choose, or they can do the opposite and switch from a larger battery to a smaller one in order to save money. A big chunk of those people are deciding they don’t actually need so much battery.
It turns out that a lot of ONVO drivers are deciding they don’t actually need such large batteries, and are downgrading their battery size. “Interestingly, in the interview, Shen Fei mentioned that the ONVO L90 originally came standard with an 85 kWh battery pack, but about 40% of owners would proactively request to ‘downgrade’ to a 60 kWh battery as a Service (BaaS).” This is partly because the annual rental fee can be reduced by 3,600 yuan, and partly because people just don’t need that much battery! Why drive around with a bunch of extra weight (and cost) if it really doesn’t even change your driving patterns?
I won’t be surprised if a similar percentage of US consumers would make the same choice. Tesla offers different range battery packs. Do other EV makers do likewise for US models?
Perhaps Tesla & other EV makers should offer even a smaller range option.