I was unable to find any evidence on the web of someone replacing the original SATA SSD with a NVME one.
ACER Support were useless in that they claimed a replacement had to be SATA (2 different queries) but couldn't explain why.
Even drivesolutions only gives SATA drives as suitablehttps://drivesolutions.com/amfinder/?find=acer-laptop-spin-series-acer-spin-3-sp315-51-laptop-436245&sid=MLfcJe6krb
I can confirm that my NVME SSD is successfully recognised and working for anyone wanting to make the change to an admittedly old laptop. My specific model is SP513-51-311K.
[Edited the thread to add model name to the title]