(Yicai) Oct. 16 -- China has unveiled an action plan to accelerate the construction of charging infrastructure, aiming to double the country’s electric vehicle charging service capacity by building 28 million charging facilities nationwide by the end of 2027.

China’s charging network will provide more than 300 million kilowatts of capacity by 2027, sufficient to meet the charging needs of over 80 million electric vehicles, according to a document jointly issued yesterday by six government departments, including the National Development and Reform Commission.

As of the end of August, China had 17.3 million charging facilities, up 54 percent from a year earlier, including 4.3 million public charging points, which grew 38 percent year on year, data from the National Energy Administration showed.

To meet its goals, China will strengthen urban fast-charging networks to cover a wide range of parking scenarios. By 2027, 1.6 million direct current charging stations will be added in cities, including 100,000 high-power ones. The country will also upgrade highway charging facilities, adding and renovating 40,000 fast chargers of at least 60 kilowatts in highway service areas.

The plan also addresses charging shortages in rural regions, targeting the installation of at least 14,000 DC chargers in townships that currently lack public charging facilities to achieve full rural coverage by 2027.

The average output of China’s public charging facilities is just 45.5 kilowatts, which remains inadequate to meet fast-charging demand in urban hotspots and along highways during peak travel periods. The plan calls for optimizing the functional layout of charging networks in key cities and highway service areas, a NEA spokesperson said.

With the rapid growth of the new energy vehicle market, China’s NEV fleet reached 31.4 million units by the end of last year, accounting for about 9 percent of total vehicles. Around 11.3 million NEVs were newly registered in 2024, representing 42 percent of all new vehicle registrations, according to official statistics.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Emmi Laine