THE number of new charging points for electric vehicles (EVs) in China grew at a rapid pace this year to meet the demand of the country’s burgeoning EV community, industrial data showed.

By the end of November, the country had about 4.95 million charging facilities, up 107.5% from the same period last year, according to the China Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Alliance (EVCIPA).

Some 2.33 million charging points were added from January to November this year, the EVCIPA said.

Of the total, the number of new public charging stations doubled from a year ago, while the number of private charging points more than quadrupled during the first 11 months compared with last year.

The rapid growth in charging facilities is generally in line with the country’s booming new energy vehicle sector.

From January to November, sales of new energy vehicles came in at 6.07 million units in China, which was 2.6 times the newly added charging points during the period, basically meeting the needs of the rapidly developing industry, the EVCIPA said.

In another development, China’s installed capacity of power batteries logged rapid growth in November, driven by the boom in the country’s new energy vehicle (NEV) market, data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers showed.

Last month, the installed capacity of power batteries for NEVs rose 64.5% year on year to 34.3 gigawatt-hours (GWh).

About 23.1 GWh of lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) batteries were installed in NEVs, surging 99.5% from a year earlier, taking up 67.4% of the monthly total.

According to the association, China’s NEV market continued rapid growth in November. The output of NEVs in the country reached 768,000 units last month, up 65.6% year on year, while the sales of NEVs rose 72.3% from a year earlier to 786,000 units.      (SD-Xinhua)