The Nio company is a mid-range Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer, exporting to numerous countries. Its chairman made a call to standardize EV batteries, at the Intelligent Electric Vehicle Development Forum 2026. We investigate the logic behind this proposition, and uncover potential savings for the industry.
Standardizing Electric Vehicle Batteries
Nio chairman William Li views the electric vehicle industry as in a dilemma, where it is increasing volumes without increasing revenue. Constantly bringing new models online is making it difficult to balance component supply and demand. This applies particularly to batteries and intelligent chips.
Li’s call to standardize EV batteries includes an observation that new models have brief sales peaks, followed by rapid decline. By the time factories have adjusted production, demand is already falling. In fact, Li says, “wasting several hundred million yuan on a single model has become the norm.”
Electric vehicle batteries and intelligent chips are at the heart of this problem, the Car News China report continues. Not having unified battery cell specifications, denies the possibility of balancing supply and demand across supply chains. But this is not the case in consumer electronics …
Times Call For a Standardized Approach
Nio’s chairman Li believes that battery technology has converged to the point where “standardization of mid-nickel ternary and high-nickel ternary cells is timely and feasible.” Ternary cells have cathodes composed of three different metals, for example nickel, manganese, and cobalt.
“If we standardize batteries and consolidate chip varieties,” Li concludes, then our industry could save over US$14.5 billion. This without eroding profits at any stage of the value chain, reducing costs by a meaningful amount per vehicle.”
The question in our minds is who would benefit from this call to standardize EV batteries? Manufacturers of electric vehicles and their batteries presumably could. But would this filter through to the ultimate drivers of the industry, who are the electric vehicle owners?
More Information
Better EV Battery Info for Customers
Standardized EV Battery Information Proposed
