Figures released by the National Energy Administration on Thursday pointed to a notable upturn in the volume of electricity delivered to new energy vehicles at highway charging points over the week-long National Day holiday period.

Between October 1 and October 7, highway charging of new-energy vehicles across the country totalled 163 million kilowatt-hours, with the daily average settling at 23.26 million kilowatt-hours — a level that ran 51.42 percent above the equivalent period a year earlier.

Two factors account for the numbers: an expanding fleet of new-energy vehicles on Chinese roads and a wider network of highway charging stations to serve them.

By most industry measures, China accounts for the highest volume of new-energy vehicle sales recorded in any single national market. Trade-in incentives and a wave of competitive homegrown models have helped push both new-energy vehicle purchases and registered ownership figures on a consistent upward path.

Government statistics place the total number of new-energy vehicles in circulation at 48.97 million, a figure representing 13.19 percent of the entire registered fleet, while purchases logged during the opening six months of 2026 show that nearly one in every two new vehicles added to the road carried an electric or alternative-energy powertrain.

Efforts to build out charging networks have moved at pace alongside a wider drive to grow the market for new-energy vehicles and reduce carbon output. Data tracking more than 24 million individual charging points nationwide puts the scale of China's electric vehicle network ahead of any other country's comparable infrastructure.

Expressway service areas across the network now host roughly 89,000 charging points, installed to meet the needs of electric vehicle users on long-distance routes. Between January and August of this year, roughly 11,000 high-power charging units were installed across those service areas — a count that matched, on its own, everything built up through all the years prior.

Across China, the National Day holiday — a stretch commonly referred to as "Golden Week" — ranks among the country's peak periods for domestic and international travel. Over the seven-day period, journeys crossing regional boundaries reached 2.14 billion in total, with daily movement averaging upward of 300 million trips.

Plans drawn up for the 15th Five-Year Plan period, running from 2026 through 2030, call for expressway service areas across the country to receive upgraded and retrofitted charging infrastructure, laying the groundwork for an intercity network capable of supporting both medium- and long-distance journeys, alongside a broader push to expand the proportion of fast-charging points within that network.

Projections place the count of charging installations above 40 million by 2030, with roughly 300,000 of those units operating at high-power output levels — a combined infrastructure capable of serving a fleet of more than 110 million electric vehicles.