China's new energy vehicle parc reached 48.97 million units as of the end of June 2026, with nearly half of all newly registered vehicles in the first half of the year being NEVs, according to People's Daily.
Charging technology has advanced significantly. Flash charging and fast charging have entered a minute-level replenishment phase, with leading companies' flash charging technology capable of adding several hundred kilometers of range in minutes, while mainstream battery swap stations now complete a single swap in just a few minutes.
During the National Day holiday, a driver traveling from Changsha stopped at a service area in Chenzhou, Hunan province when his battery dropped below 30 percent. Ten minutes after plugging in and scanning the QR code, his battery had reached 85 percent. "It's basically charged by the time I finish a trip to the restroom," he said.
At the Hebi service area on the Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao Expressway, six charging and swapping stations operated by companies including Henan Transportation Investment New Energy, State Grid, and NIO offer 80 charging guns. A flash charging station installed in September features a maximum single-gun power output of 1,500 kilowatts. Managers reported that holiday service areas deployed additional staff to guide vehicles, achieving essentially no queuing with vehicles charging as they arrived.
In the first three days of the holiday, NEV charging sessions on China's highways totaled 2.9686 million, averaging 989,500 per day — up 48.41% year-on-year. Charging volume reached 71.6193 million kilowatt-hours, averaging 23.8731 million kilowatt-hours per day, up 49.39% year-on-year. On October 1 alone, highway charging volume hit 28.0469 million kilowatt-hours, up 60.4% from the first day of last year's holiday and setting a new record for a single holiday day.
Range anxiety appears to be easing. Even as NEV traffic grew 35% year-on-year during the holiday, the average daily number of service areas with particularly heavy charging demand actually fell 17%.
Experts attribute the improvement to both better vehicle performance — with average range for battery-electric passenger cars now reaching 500 kilometers — and accelerated charging network construction. About 11,000 new high-power charging facilities were added at service areas in the first eight months of this year. BYD has built more than 11,500 flash charging stations, including locations in Lhasa, Tibet and Shangri-La, Yunnan.
