China to add 800,000 charging points

In 2016, China also added 100,000 public charging points, and it has a total of about 150,000 public charging points right now.

The new points will mainly be installed in cities and on highways. China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) claims that in Beijing and Shanghai there is always a charging facility within a radius of five kilometers and that 14,000 kilometers of highway have access to fast-charging stations.

The pace of construction will continue to at least 2020 when China wants to have enough charging capacity to support a fleet of five million electric vehicles.

New Energy Vehicles include electric vehicles (EV) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV). Last year 507,000 NEVs were sold in China and this year the country targets 800,000 units.

Big cities like Beijing and Shanghai are adding electric and plug-in hybrid buses to their fleets in record numbers, and many city-based transport companies are going electric as well, using vehicles ranging from tricycles, minivans to mid-sized trucks.