China's new energy vehicles (NEVs) delivered a strong performance on the nation's highways during the 2026 National Day holiday, with daily average charging volume rising 51.42% year-on-year, according to the National Energy Administration.
Statistics from the National Energy Administration covering the October 1 to October 7 holiday period show that 62,700 highway charging facilities tracked by the National Charging Facilities Monitoring Service Platform handled 6.711 million charging sessions, with a total charging volume of 163 million kilowatt-hours. Daily average charging volume reached 23.2566 million kilowatt-hours, an increase of 51.42% compared with the same period last year.
The number of monitored charging guns rose by approximately 29.5% year-on-year, from 48,400 in the previous year to 62,700, indicating that infrastructure expansion is keeping pace with surging demand.
Looking back over three years, average daily charging volume on China's highways has more than doubled, rising from 10.3075 million kilowatt-hours during the 2024 National Day holiday to 15.3591 million kilowatt-hours in 2025, and now to 23.2566 million kilowatt-hours in 2026 — an annual compound growth rate of more than 50%. Average energy delivered per charging session also increased from 23.3 kilowatt-hours in 2024 to 24.3 kilowatt-hours in 2026, reflecting the dual effect of widespread high-power charging deployment and improving vehicle range.
Notably, charging growth is outpacing fleet growth. The national NEV parc grew by roughly 56% between the end of 2024 and 2026, while National Day highway charging volume grew by about 126% over the same period. This suggests NEV usage is expanding rapidly from short urban commutes into medium- and long-distance intercity travel.
Analysts noted that charging load has become an important incremental demand for the power system, and expected the trend to benefit grid-side and user-side energy storage, as well as virtual power plants and demand-side response. Sub-sectors such as charging pile operators, high-power supercharging equipment, integrated photovoltaic-storage-charging systems, and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology are expected to benefit.
