Number of charging piles for electric vehicles to rise

The number of electric vehicle charging piles in China is estimated to reach 1.66 million by this year-end and 11.2 million in 2025, while the ratio of EVs to charging piles will continue to decline, a recent report said.

The report issued by Beijing-based think tank EO Intelligence said that in 2019, China's EV charging piles surged by 56.9 percent year-on-year to 1.22 million. With the EV sector growing rapidly and given the government's favorable policies in "new infrastructure", the EV charging market is expected to expand accordingly.

The central government released its "new infrastructure" construction plan in March. EV charging piles were included in the plan, making it a key sector for national infrastructure construction.

"With the opportunities brought by 'new infrastructure' construction, the development of the charging pile sector is expected to speed up, and a 1 trillion yuan ($144 billion) market will probably develop,"Sun Huifeng, president of CCID Consulting, said in an interview with China Automotive News.

According to the report, the ratio of the country's newly added EVs to newly added charging piles in 2019 was 3.4, EO Intelligence said. It is estimated that by 2025, the ratio will drop to 2. In the long term, it will likely drop to 1.

The report also showed that high power charging piles will become mainstream as EV owners, especially taxi drivers, favor quick charging. High-power charging piles greatly shorten the charging period and ease charging anxiety. For enterprises, high charging efficiency increases the rate of return on investment.

Currently, it takes charging piles one to one-and-a-half hours to fulfill the endurance mileage of 200 kilometers. In the future, the time period will be cut to 10 minutes, the report said.

The country's first high power charging demonstration station for a passenger EV was established in Beijing on Jan 11, 2019.

The charging station, built by State Grid Electric Vehicle Service Co Ltd, can fulfill the endurance mileage of 300 km of an EV in 10 minutes. The charging time is equivalent to the time it takes to fuel a petrol vehicle that runs the same distance.

The company said that in the future, it will speed up the research on high power charging technology and organize relevant pilot work. The pilot work will cover Beijing and Shandong, Jiangsu, Hunan and Fujian provinces among others.

Another trend for the industry is intelligence. With the introduction of the internet, charging piles will complete the intelligent upgrade and have value-added services.

For example, during the charging period, charging stations can offer services including automobile inspection and maintenance. Users can reserve the services through mobile apps. In this way, a comprehensive service ecology can be formed.

Shenzhen, Guangdong-based EV manufacturer BYD said that as EVs are gradually coming into the public's sight in recent years, the charging infrastructure has been rapidly evolving and there are more and more charging piles that are accessible to the public.

The company has accelerated product iteration and launched EVs that are suitable for quick charging to cut the waiting time for consumers.

With the constant upgrade of products and technologies and the country's emphasis in charging infrastructure in the future, EV consumers are expected to have a better user experience, the company said.