China’s National Day holiday has exposed the scale of electric vehicle travel on the country’s highways, with charging demand reaching a new peak. China Highway EV Chargers delivered 28.05 million kWh on October 1, 2026, marking the highest single-day holiday charging volume recorded by the national monitoring platform. The figure was 60.4% higher than a year earlier, but the surge was partly driven by a larger monitored charging network. Even after adjusting for connector growth, charging activity per monitored connector rose significantly, showing that China’s expanding EV fleet is putting greater pressure on highway infrastructure during major travel periods nationwide.
What Happened to China’s Highway EV Charging?
China Highway EV Chargers delivered a record 28.05 million kWh on October 1, 2026, the first day of the National Day holiday. Charging volume was 60.4% higher year over year, while the number of monitored highway charging connectors increased 29.5%.
However, the increase in electricity delivered was not entirely due to stronger demand. Calculations based on the monitored connector pool show that electricity delivered per connector increased by 23.8%, offering a clearer picture of the rise in charging intensity.
China Records Its Biggest Holiday Charging Day
China’s National Energy Administration said October 1 recorded the highest single-day charging volume during any holiday period.
The monitored charging network delivered 28.05 million kWh, compared with 17.49 million kWh on the first day of the 2025 holiday. That represents a 60.4% year-over-year increase.
The record comes as millions of Chinese EV owners took to the roads during the National Day travel period, putting intense pressure on highway charging infrastructure.
Key Numbers at a Glance
- 28.05 million kWh—charging volume on October 1, 2026
- 60.4%—year-over-year increase in the reported charging volume
- 62,700—monitored charging connectors
- 29.5%—increase in monitored connectors from the previous year
- 447 kWh—approximate October 1 output per monitored connector
- 23.8%—increase in output per connector
- 2.97 million—charging sessions from October 1–3
- 71.62 million kWh—electricity delivered during those three days
Bigger Charging Network Explains Part of the Surge
The headline 60.4% increase needs some context.
The national charging monitoring platform covered 62,700 charging connectors at expressway service areas on October 1, compared with 48,400 connectors a year earlier. That represents a 29.5% expansion in the monitored pool.
The agency has not specified how much of this increase came from newly installed chargers and how much resulted from existing chargers being newly connected to the monitoring platform.
As a result, the year-over-year electricity increase cannot be treated entirely as an increase in underlying charging demand.
EV Chargers Worked Harder Too
A more useful comparison comes from measuring electricity delivered per monitored connector.
Based on the available figures, output increased from approximately 361 kWh per connector in 2025 to about 447 kWh in 2026.
That represents a 23.8% increase in output per connector.
This suggests the record was not simply the result of having more chargers in the monitoring system. Existing monitored infrastructure also handled substantially greater charging activity during the holiday rush.
The data does not provide a constant-connector series covering the entire network, however, so the per-connector calculation should be viewed as an indicator rather than a complete measure of nationwide utilization.
89,000 Highway Charging Connectors Across Service Areas
China’s overall highway charging infrastructure is considerably larger than the monitored group.
Transport Vice Minister Li Yang said on September 24 that highway service areas had approximately 89,000 charging connectors, including around 22,000 high-power units.
About 11,000 high-power charging units were added between January and August, highlighting the rapid expansion of high-power charging capacity ahead of the holiday travel season.
However, officials have not established whether the 89,000-connector figure and the 62,700 monitored connectors are compiled on exactly the same basis.
Three Days of National Day Charging Show Strong Demand
The charging surge continued beyond October 1.
Between October 1 and October 3, monitored highway chargers processed 2.97 million charging sessions, up 48.4% from the same period of the previous year’s holiday.
Electricity consumption reached 71.62 million kWh, an increase of 49.4% year over year.
The three-day average was approximately 23.87 million kWh per day, while the average energy delivered per session was around 24 kWh, indicating that many charging events represented partial rather than full battery recharges.
The October 1 figure was also around 22% higher than the 23.03 million kWh recorded on May 1, the first day of China’s 2026 Labor Day holiday.
The comparison is notable because this year’s National Day holiday lasts seven days, compared with eight days in 2025, when the National Day period coincided with the Mid-Autumn Festival.
EV Travel Demand Puts Highway Infrastructure to the Test
China’s EV fleet has expanded rapidly, creating a much larger base of vehicles that can generate highway charging demand.
As of June 2026, approximately 49 million EVs were operating on China’s roads, accounting for 13.19% of all operating vehicles.
During the Golden Week holiday, average daily EV travel was projected to reach around 15.6 million trips, compared with approximately 9.8 million on a normal day.
Another estimate from Transport Vice Minister Li Yang put new-energy vehicle expressway traffic at 17.8 million trips on October 1, around 1.8 times normal daily traffic.
Mobile Charging Trucks Help Tackle Highway Queues
The holiday rush has also accelerated the use of mobile charging solutions.
In provinces such as Anhui, large mobile charging road trains were deployed to areas facing severe congestion. These systems essentially function as large mobile battery banks, bringing electricity directly to locations where fixed charging infrastructure is under pressure.
Each trailer can hold more than 3,000 kWh of electricity, enough to serve more than 80 vehicles. Fast-charging modules can raise an EV’s battery from approximately 20% to 80% in about 30 minutes.
The approach provides a flexible way to temporarily increase charging capacity without waiting for permanent infrastructure upgrades.
BYD Accelerates Highway Flash Charging Expansion
Automakers and energy companies also increased infrastructure deployment ahead of the holiday.
BYD accelerated its Flash Charging China rollout and opened its 2,000th highway flash charging station in late September, bringing its original end-of-2026 target forward.
The timing reflects the growing importance of high-power highway charging as EV traffic increases during China’s major national travel periods.
Some Drivers Still Faced Hours-Long Queues
Despite official efforts to maintain smooth operations, charging congestion remained severe at some locations.
Reports cited in the supplied data described one driver in Gansu waiting seven hours overnight at a service area on the G75 expressway. Another driver reportedly received queue number 99 and waited more than five hours at another location.
There were also cases where drivers waited 30 minutes or less, showing that charging conditions varied significantly between service areas.
To ease congestion, State Grid deployed 599 temporary charging connectors and 32 mobile charging trucks at busy service areas. Drivers were also encouraged to leave charging locations after reaching an 80% state of charge so that other vehicles could use the infrastructure.
China Southern Power Grid Also Sets a Record
China Southern Power Grid’s charging platform delivered 10.44 million kWh on October 1, representing a 24.5% increase and its first day above the 10-million-kWh threshold.
The figure adds another indication of how strongly holiday travel is driving electricity demand from electric vehicles.
EV Charging Demand Rises Despite Slower New-Car Sales
One of the more interesting aspects of the data is that the charging record came while new-energy vehicle sales were weakening.
China’s retail sales of new-energy passenger vehicles reached 827,000 units between September 1 and September 27, down 20% from the same period a year earlier.
Year-to-date sales reached 7.50 million units, down 13%.
Despite the decline, new-energy vehicles represented 65.7% of passenger vehicle retail sales during the period because the broader passenger-car market declined even more sharply. Total passenger vehicle retail sales fell 29% to 1.26 million units.
Wholesale new-energy vehicle volumes declined 11% to 1.03 million units during the period but remained up 7% year to date at 10.81 million units.
This highlights an important point: highway charging demand is influenced more by the number of EVs already on the road and their travel patterns than by short-term new-car sales.
Battery Swapping Is Not Included in the Charging Record
The 28.05-million-kWh figure does not represent all energy services used by EVs on China’s highways.
Battery swapping is excluded from the National Energy Administration’s charging total.
Nio recorded 183,469 battery swaps on October 1, setting a company record at the time. It surpassed that number again on October 5 with 183,664 swaps.
The company operates nearly 1,100 battery-swap stations on highways, demonstrating that China’s long-distance EV infrastructure is developing through both conventional charging and battery-swapping networks.
Highway Charging Is a Local Grid Challenge
At the national level, the electricity consumed by highway EV charging remains relatively small.
China’s average daily electricity consumption in 2025 was approximately 28.4 billion kWh. Against that figure, the 28.05 million kWh consumed by monitored expressway charging on October 1 represented only around 0.1% of a typical day’s national electricity consumption.
The bigger challenge is therefore not national electricity availability but local peak demand at individual highway service areas and their grid connections.
A service area can experience a sharp concentration of EV charging demand even when the country’s overall electricity system has substantial capacity.
China’s Charging Network Continues to Expand
China had approximately 24.22 million charging connectors of all types at the end of August, up 39.6% year over year.
Of these, around 5.16 million were public charging connectors.
The government has set an even more ambitious target: more than 40 million charging connectors by 2030, including approximately 300,000 high-power charging units.
The National Day charging record demonstrates why that expansion is becoming increasingly important. More EVs are travelling longer distances, while holiday traffic can concentrate charging demand into a small number of locations and narrow time windows.
What the Record Means for China’s EV Charging Future
The latest figures offer a more nuanced picture than the headline 60.4% increase suggests.
The expansion of the monitored charging network contributed significantly to the year-over-year jump. At the same time, the 23.8% increase in electricity delivered per monitored connector indicates that charging infrastructure was also being used more intensively.
The three-day figures reinforce that trend, with nearly 3 million charging sessions and 71.62 million kWh of electricity delivered.
For China’s rapidly expanding EV ecosystem, the challenge is increasingly about ensuring that highway charging capacity can keep pace with holiday peaks, high-power charging demand, local grid constraints, and growing long-distance EV travel.
China Highway EV Chargers are therefore becoming an increasingly important part of China’s electric mobility infrastructure—not simply because of the number of charging points installed, but because of how effectively those chargers can handle extreme demand when millions of EVs travel at the same time.
Key Takeaways
- China’s highway charging reached a record 28.05 million kWh on October 1.
- The reported charging volume jumped 60.4% year over year.
- The monitored connector base increased 29.5%, explaining part of the growth.
- Charging output per monitored connector rose 23.8%, indicating stronger utilization.
- Highway chargers delivered 71.62 million kWh across October 1–3.
- Nearly 3 million charging sessions were recorded during those three days.
- Mobile charging trucks and temporary connectors were deployed to tackle congestion.
- Battery swapping was not included in the charging figures.
- China had 24.22 million charging connectors of all types at the end of August.
- The country is targeting more than 40 million connectors by 2030.
Overall, the National Day record shows that China’s EV transition is moving beyond vehicle sales and into a new infrastructure challenge: how to keep millions of electric vehicles charged when highway travel demand reaches its annual peak.
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