Highway EV charging demand in China surged during the National Day holiday, with both charging sessions and electricity use rising by almost 50% year on year.
National Energy Administration figures released on Oct 4 showed that 62,700 highway charging connectors linked to the national monitoring platform handled 2.97 million charging sessions from Oct 1 to Oct 3.
That averaged 989,500 sessions a day, up 48.41% from the same holiday period last year.
Electricity dispensed reached 71.62 million kWh, or 23.87 million kWh a day, an increase of 49.39% year on year.
Demand peaked on Oct 1, when highway charging reached 28.05 million kWh, up 60.4% from the first day of last year’s National Day holiday and setting a single-day holiday record.
The surge put pressure on busy service areas, with some sites deploying mobile charging equipment and encouraging drivers to vacate chargers after reaching around 80% state of charge to shorten queues.
China had more than 24 million EV charging connectors nationwide by early October, while highway service areas had about 89,000 charging connectors, according to Xinhua.
