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 leasing in BaaS could benefit the manufacturer, the customers, and the environment compared with simple battery leasing. Methodology/results: Adopting a game-theoretical model, we find that introducing flexible battery leasing in BaaS can simultaneously improve the manufacturer profit as well as reduce the total customer cost and the total battery capacity. Such win-win-win outcomes generally occur for large high-capacity battery ranges and moderate high-capacity battery costs—both consistent with the ongoing trend in the EV industry and a model-calibration exercise. We further show that this key finding is robust for correlated regular and peak needs for range and when launching BaaS with flexible battery leasing and that if the manufacturer was to choose a high-capacity battery range for flexible battery leasing, it would choose one such that battery reallocation alone can meet all battery up-/downgrade demand without acquiring additional batteries. Managerial implications: Our findings confirm that flexible battery leasing can be a viable BaaS business model innovation and offer insights into when this may be the case. This insight strengthens the strategic support for EV manufacturers’ potential adoption of the swappable-battery design and the BaaS model, and it may inform their operating policies to implement flexible battery leasing.History: This paper has been accepted in the Manufacturing & Service Operations Management Frontiers in Operations Initiative.Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2022.0587 .

中文翻译：

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运营前沿：电池即服务：灵活的电动汽车电池租赁

问题定义：电动汽车 (EV) 制造商 NIO 采用可更换电池设计和称为电池即服务 (BaaS) 的电池租赁业务模式。该公司最近推出了灵活的电池租赁服务，允许客户根据续航里程的需要临时升级/降级其主要租赁电池。我们研究这种商业模式创新是否可行，即与简单的电池租赁相比，在 BaaS 中引入灵活的电池租赁是否能够使制造商、客户和环境受益。方法/结果：采用博弈论模型，我们发现在BaaS中引入灵活的电池租赁可以同时提高制造商利润，并降低客户总成本和总电池容量。这种三赢的结果通常发生在大型高容量电池组和适度的高容量电池成本上，这两者都符合电动汽车行业的持续趋势和模型校准工作。我们进一步表明，这一关键发现对于相关的常规和峰值续航需求以及在推出具有灵活电池租赁的 BaaS 时是稳健的，并且如果制造商要选择高容量电池范围进行灵活电池租赁，它将选择这样的一种：仅电池重新分配就可以满足所有电池升级/降级需求，而无需购买额外的电池。管理影响：我们的研究结果证实，灵活的电池租赁可以成为一种可行的 BaaS 商业模式创新，并提供有关何时可能出现这种情况的见解。这一见解加强了对电动汽车制造商潜在采用可更换电池设计和 BaaS 模式的战略支持，并可能为他们实施灵活电池租赁的运营政策提供信息。 历史：本文已被《制造与服务运营管理》杂志接受运营前沿倡议。补充材料：在线附录可在 https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2022.0587 获取。