China's Charging Infrastructure Expands by Nearly 90 Percent Year-on-Year In...

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BEIJING, April 12 (TMTPOST) —— China's domestic charging infrastructure increased by 632,000 units in March 2023, of which public charging piles increased by 89.3% year on year, and private charging piles built along with vehicles continued to rise by 15.9% year on year, according to the report released by the China Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Alliance on Tuesday.

As of March 2023, the cumulative number of charging infrastructure in China reached 5.842 million units, an increase of 87.9 percent year-on-year.

China's charging capacity is mainly concentrated in Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hebei, Sichuan, Fujian, Shanghai, Shaanxi, Henan, Hubei, and other provinces. The power is mainly used for the operation of buses and passenger cars, while other types of vehicles such as sanitation logistics vehicles and taxis account for a relatively small proportion. The total amount of charging electricity in China was about 2.49 billion KWH in March 2023, 0.6 million KWH less than last month, 130.6% more than last year, and 2.2% less than last month.

Guangdong, Ningxia, Shaanxi, Zhejiang, and other places have released policies related to new charging facilities since March, covering charging pile construction, requirements on the coverage ratio of charging piles in public areas, and key construction areas.

Charging infrastructure and new energy vehicles continue to grow rapidly. 1.586 million new energy vehicles were sold in March 2023. The incremental ratio of pile vehicles is 1:2.5, enabling the construction of charging infrastructure to meet the rapid development of new energy vehicles.

In March 2023, there were 89,000 more public charging piles than in February, which increased 59.0% year-on-year in March. By March 2023, a total of 1.958 million public charging piles had been reported by member units of the Alliance, including 822,000 DC charging piles and 1.136 million AC charging piles. It is expected that about 61,000 new public charging piles will be added every month from April 2022 to March 2023.

In addition, there are 4,232 service areas with charging service capability along highways across China, with 18,459 public charging piles.

Soochow Securities Co Ltd believes that the rapid growth of the number of new energy vehicles has led to a large number of energy supplement demands. DC fast charging pile with higher charging efficiency is set to be a popular choice in the future. The progress of vehicles, piles, and policies will promote the rapid penetration of DC fast-charging piles. DC liquid-cooled supercharging technology is also expected to further increase the upper limit of charging power. It is expected that the domestic charging pile market will be close to 67 billion yuan ($9.7 billion) by 2025, including 57.3 billion yuan ($8.3 billion) for DC charging piles. This will drive up the demand for charging modules, major components (power devices, magnetic components, capacitors, PCB, chips), and charging guns.

The construction of charging infrastructure is crucial to the sales volume and penetration rate of new energy vehicles. However, the range anxiety caused by the imperfect existing charging facilities remains a problem for the industry. There are only about 7.5 charging piles for every 100 new-energy vehicles in China. Accelerating the construction of public charging piles and fast charging systems, and building a larger-scale energy replenishment system will become a breakthrough to solve the development bottleneck of new energy vehicles.