China Focus: Social capital eyes booming EV charging market

BEIJING, Nov. 6 (Xinhua) — China’s electric vehicle (EV) charging sector, with an estimated market size of over 100 billion yuan, has been witnessing waves of investors vying to break into the lucrative business.

At an exhibition of charging technology held here on Friday, active players including Nari Technology (600406.SH), TGOOD Electric (300001.SZ), Nancal Energy & Engineering, and Wanbang BJEV all put on display their latest EV charging products and technology.

TGOOD Electric alone has set up EV charging joint ventures in 30 cities across China and plans to build 60,000 power poles in more than 80 cities by the end of this year. In an effort to further consolidate its market presence, TGOOD said it would invest an additional 4 billion yuan to expand the company’s charging network across the county next year.

Wanbang BJEV will have 10,000 power poles established nationwide by the yearend and plans to double the figure by March 2016.

In the meantime, cooperation between enterprises is getting deeper. Nancal Energy & Engineering has teamed up with leading Chinese refiner Sinopec to build multiple charging stations in Beijing and several other cities.

China’s major power grid operator the State Grid, another leading performer in the charging market, had build up 618 charging stations and 24,000 power poles by the end of 2014. The power grid giant is moving forward to build more charging networks along China’s highways and in more major cities and the Being-Tianjin-Hebei and the Yangtze River Delta regions.

The central government expects to establish a comprehensive charging network that could accommodate five million electric vehicles by 2020, said the State Council in late September.

In order to support the operation of 5 million electric vehicles, China needs to build up 4.8 million charging poles and 12,000 charging stations, which means that at least 960,000 charging poles should be built every year by 2020, said Tong Guangyi, vice-director of the Power Department of the National Energy Administration.

The direct market size of the EV charging sector would surpass 130 billion yuan in light of the booming demand, said Tong.

More than 40,000 public EV charging poles had been set up across China by the end of September, according to data provided by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. (Edited by Shi Chunjiao, shichunjiao@xinhua.org)

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