Frontiers in Operations: Battery as a Service: Flexible Electric Vehicle Battery Leasing

Problem definition: The electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer NIO adopts a swappable-battery design and a battery-leasing business model known as battery as a service (BaaS). It recently introduced flexible battery leasing, which allows customers to temporarily up-/downgrade their primary leased batteries based on the needs for range. We investigate whether this business model innovation is viable, namely whether introducing flexible battery …