Han Ximin

    ximhan@126.com

    DRIVEN by China’s incentive policies on electric vehicles and rapid development of the industry, charging stations and charging poles have flourished in major Chinese cities especially in the Pearl River Delta, the Yangtze River Delta and the Beijing-Tianjin-Heibei economic zone.

    At the three-day 5th Shenzhen International Electric Vehicle Supply Equipments Fair, more than 300 charging facility makers ramped up their efforts to introduce their products and business mode to visitors.

    Statistics showed China produced 132,000 new energy vehicles between January and May, 126,000 were sold, an increase of 134 percent over the same period last year.

    By the end of May, Shenzhen put 46,224 new energy vehicles into use, including 6,634 buses, 4,265 cabs, 9,067 electric vehicles (EVs) in logistics, 7,730 EVs in rental service and 17,678 EVs for private use.

    “The development of EVs couldn’t be sustained without the support of charging facilities. So we are now promoting the construction of 1,832 charging poles for public transportation vehicles and 2,365 instant charging vehicles for public use and 19,232 poles at housing estates and in public parking lots,” said Lu Xiangzhen, assistant director with the Leading Group Office of Energy Saving and New Energy Vehicle Promotion of Shenzhen Development and Reform Commission.

    By 2020, Shenzhen will promote accumulative use of 120,000 new energy vehicles, 3 to 5 percent of the city’s total vehicles.

    “This is the best time for the development of charging facility makers and the warring period for them to grab market share as the Central Government has set a guide line of setting up nearly 5 million charging spots by 2020 in November last year,” said Li Haidong, market director with Shanghai Topower Group, one of the earliest companies in China to manufacture charging stations.

    The company started research in 2006 for the production of BYD vehicles, around eight years earlier than the flourishing of the industry in 2014.

    “The guideline had clearly states 12,000 integrated EV charging stations and 4.8 million distributed charging poles will be built nationwide to meet the demand of 5 million EVs in China,” said Li.

    In principle, one vehicle will have one charging pole.

    It also requires all parking lots, private or public, to be equipped with charging facilities or reserve space for future installment in accordance with the percentage specified in the guideline.

    Facing the flourishing of the industry, Li said the biggest problem private EV charging pole makers are facing is funding shortages and it isn’t easy to get loans from banks for small and medium-sized enterprises. Li’s company was listed on the National Equities Exchange and Quotations or the Over-The-Counter Market this April.

    Li became more confident with the industry as the National Development and Reform Commission, starting from this January, introduced national standards on charging ports for electric vehicles.

    “The standards will protect the market from disorderly development, prevent the waste of social resources, and boost implementation of EV industrial policies,” said Li.

    The charging poles and stations are app-based, allowing users to pay their bills, and check locations of charging poles through their phones.

    Exhibitors, including Topower, at the fair, which concluded Saturday, also introduced portable devices. “The portable devices... can solve difficulty in parking lots at residential buildings where charging poles are hard to install,” Li said.