The number of charging piles for electric vehicles (EV) in China had reached 11.884 million by the end of October this year, a significant year-on-year growth of 49.4 percent, industry data showed on Thursday.
From January to October, 3.288 million new charging piles were installed across China, an increase of 19.8 percent year on year, according to data released by China Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Alliance at the China Automobile Charging and Swapping Ecology Conference running from Wednesday to Friday in Taiyuan City of north China's Shanxi Province.
Thanks to the adoption of various favorable policies in recent years, China has established a quite complete automobile charging and swapping service network, with charging infrastructure covering residential areas, highway rest areas, areas along highways, public spaces and rural areas.
Another contributor to this expansion is the high production capacity and wide popularity of EVs in the country. With a month and a half left in the year, China's annual output of new-energy vehicles has already surpassed the 10-million-unit mark, making it the first country to achieve this milestone, according to data from industry group China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM).
"The current incremental ratio of charging piles to new energy vehicles is 1:2.6. The development of charging infrastructure has caught up with the rapid growth in new energy vehicles. The total number of existing charging piles is nearly 12 million, and the total number of new energy vehicles is over 28 million, so the facilities can meet the current charging needs," said Tong Zongqi, deputy secretary-general of the alliance, in an interview with China Central Television on the sidelines of the China Automobile Charging and Swapping Ecology Conference. In keeping with the rapid growth in EV charging facilities nationwide over recent years, the EV charging industrial chain has also kept improving, with breakthroughs made in the development of new technologies such as mobile charging, wireless charging and megawatt charging, with rapid progress achieved in smart charging.
At the conference on Thursday, the alliance announced the first batch of 44 five-star electric vehicle charging stations, which are built by 23 companies to improve the industrial ecology and better meet the increasingly differentiated demand from EV owners.
The meeting also stressed the importance of talent cultivation for further development of the industrial ecology.
In the future, China will encourage innovations of charging technology and business forms, make appropriately future-oriented efforts to step up the construction of charging networks in rural areas, and carry out high-power facility building with priority given to the busiest charging service areas.
China sees robust growth in EV charging facilities
