China Has Installed Around 4.7 Million Electric Vehicle Charging Poles as of October 2022

author: Eric Walz   

China is the world's biggest auto market with sales of over 25 million passenger vehicles in 2021. But as the country transitions to electric vehicles there is a growing demand for EV charging infrastructure to support millions of EV drivers. 

To prepare for this future, companies in China are installing tens of thousands of new EV chargers so driver's will have convenient places to charge. Data from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) shows that EV sales in China jumped by 169% in 2021 to almost three million units. As a result, the number of EV chargers in China has grown significantly.

As of the end of October, there had been 4.708 million charging piles deployed across China,  according to the China Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Alliance (EVCIPA) and data analyzed by news outlet Gasgoo.

It represents a 109% jump from cumulative volume from the same period of last year. Construction of new chargers continued at a rapid pace in the first ten months of 2022.

Roughly two million charging piles were newly built in China since the beginning of the year representing a YoY increase of 265.5%. The total includes a mix of 533,000 public piles and 1.558 million private ones. Last month alone, around 44,000 public charging piles were deployed in China. On average, roughly 50,000 new EV chargers are being installed each month in China.

The top three EV charging operators in China are TELD New Energy, State Grid, and Star Charge. TELD is the only operator to own over 20,000 charging stations spread across 350 major cities in China. 

The deployment of new chargers varies by region in China. The highest number of EV chargers (18,698) were installed in Guangdong, according to data from the EVCIPA. The size of Guangdong's EV charging network has doubled since 2021. 

The province now has more EV chargers than the entire U.S. As of Sept 30, 2022, 345,126 public chargers and 19,116 charging stations were installed. This figure is around 3 times more than the U.S., which has around 140,000 chargers spread across 53,000 EV charging stations. Around one third of all U.S. EV chargers are located in California.

A 2021 study by the California Energy Commission (CEC) shows the state will need nearly 1.2 million public and shared chargers by 2030 to meet the fueling demands of the 7.5 million passenger plug-in electric vehicles (EVs) anticipated to be on California roads by then. 

China's goal is to have 40% of passenger vehicles sold each year be fully-electric. By 2025, the Chinese government plans to have charging infrastructure in place to serve more than 20 million EV drivers, so the rapid pace of installing both public and private chargers will continue.

China now accounts for more than half of all global EV sales.

Eric Walz

Originally hailing from New Jersey, Eric is a automotive & technology reporter covering the high-tech industry here in Silicon Valley. He has over 15 years of automotive experience and a bachelors degree in computer science. These skills, combined with technical writing and news reporting, allows him to fully understand and identify new and innovative technologies in the auto industry and beyond. He has worked at Uber on self-driving cars and as a technical writer, helping people to understand and work with technology.