Gasgoo Munich- New data from the National Energy Administration shows highway charging demand for new-energy vehicles reached 163 million kWh during the Oct. 1–7 holiday. Daily charging volumes jumped 51.42% from a year earlier, with the opening day alone hitting 3.24 times the normal average.
With charging demand up by half, the lines should only be getting longer.
Yet scroll through social media this National Day, and something counterintuitive emerges: the usual complaints about spending hours in line at highway chargers seem quieter than in years past.
Has the charging problem actually been solved? Not quite.
More accurately, the replenishment ecosystem is shifting: the question is no longer whether chargers exist, but whether they're fast and smart enough.
Image Source: Gasgoo
Charging Demand Surges 51% — Why Are the Complaints Fading?
Start with the numbers.
Over the seven-day break, 62,700 highway charging connectors tracked by the national monitoring platform logged 6.71 million sessions, delivering 163 million kWh. On Oct. 1 alone, volume hit 28.05 million kWh — a 60.4% annual jump that set a new single-day holiday record, coming in at 3.24 times the daily average.
The Ministry of Transport estimated roughly 17.8 million new-energy vehicles hit the highways on Oct. 1 — 80% above normal. For the full holiday, daily highway traffic for such vehicles averaged around 16.4 million, climbing 32.7% from a year earlier to account for nearly a third of all highway flow.
Behind the data, extreme cases still flare up. Some drivers waited seven hours, drawing queue numbers past 100; others pushed their dead cars to the roadside. A few crowded service areas even rolled out emergency rules: unplug at 80% and move on.
So why is the public outcry cooling? Break it down, and at least five factors are working together to dilute the pain.
First, supercharging is going mainstream, drastically cutting per-car plug time. Over the past year, 800V architectures and 6C fast charging have filtered down. Ranges that once took 40 minutes to top up now take 15 to 20. Higher turnover means the same pool of chargers can serve far more vehicles than a year ago.
Second, the network is getting denser. Monitored highway connectors now total 62,700, achieving near-full coverage at service areas along popular corridors. More stations to choose from naturally thins out the average wait time.
Third, automaker-owned networks are siphoning off demand. Over the holiday, NIO's highway charging and battery-swapping volume topped 24.83 million kWh — a 30.8% annual jump that accounted for 13.7% of the national total. BYD's flash-charge network, meanwhile, served more than 180,000 vehicles a day. These proprietary networks carve out independent channels alongside public chargers.
Fourth, drivers have smarter travel strategies. Schooled by the queues of recent years, most EV owners now set off at off-peak hours, map out charging stops in advance, and hunt for a plug before the battery dips below 30%. Plenty also detour to city stations off the highway to dodge the worst bottlenecks.
Fifth, emergency top-ups are becoming routine. Mobile charging trucks — essentially giant power banks — rolled into service areas across the country this holiday. While not a primary solution, they act as a safety net during extreme spikes, easing the dread of being stranded with a dead battery.
One driver who piloted a pure EV from Beijing to Xinjiang along the G7 expressway saw it firsthand. Five years ago, on this long, desolate route across the Gobi — where service areas can sit 100 km apart — the surrounding traffic was mostly Toyota Prados and Land Cruisers. This year, half the cars waiting at the chargers were mainstream family EVs priced around 200,000 to 300,000 yuan: Xiaomi, Tesla, NIO, Maxus, Denza — you name it.
Near the Ejina Banner service area, he even spotted a couple with two kids draping their quilts over the railings to dry in the sun. Sleeping in the car at a charger, airing bedding at a rest stop — maneuvers once unthinkable — have simply become part of the routine for many EV owners this year.
Layer those five factors together, and the outcome is clear: total system strain is mounting, but the odds of any single driver hitting an extreme queue are dropping. That's why charging demand can surge by half while the chorus of complaints quietly fades.
The Tidal Dilemma Persists: Demand Surges 51%, Infrastructure Only Grew 22%
Yet to assume the charging problem is history would be wildly optimistic.
Consider this mismatch: holiday highway charging demand soared 51.42% year on year, while the charging infrastructure itself only expanded by roughly 22%. Demand is growing at more than twice the pace of supply.
Beneath that gap lies the core structural flaw of highway charging: the tidal effect.
Simply put, the issue isn't an absolute shortage of chargers — it's that they sit idle on normal days and get crushed during holidays. A network sized for everyday traffic will inevitably buckle when holiday travel surges more than threefold, especially on popular routes at peak hours.
Operators can't build to holiday peaks — utilization would be too thin to turn a profit the rest of the year. And you can't exactly tell drivers to stay home.
Hence the emergency rules capping charges at 80%, the mobile trucks rolling in as a fallback, and the ticketing systems appearing at rest stops. These are band-aids applied under tidal pressure, not systemic fixes.
According to the China Passenger Car Association, retail penetration for new-energy vehicles hit an all-time high of 67.0% in September. Under the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers' measure, NEV share of new-car sales has topped 60% for three straight months — and the share of pure electrics keeps climbing.
The implication is clear: next year's holiday, and the year after that, will bring even more EVs onto the highways, pushing peak charging stress ever higher. If supply can't keep pace with demand, the charging crunch won't truly vanish — it will simply resurface, varying in intensity from year to year and route to route.
The real answer likely goes beyond simply pouring more concrete for chargers. Denser supercharging networks, battery swapping opened to more models, smarter travel dispatch through vehicle-infrastructure coordination, and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) integration to balance grid loads — progress on these fronts is what will determine whether the lines at next year's holiday rest stops grow longer or shorter.
