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Holiday Tidal Demand Tests the Network
This National Day holiday, some highway service areas again saw charging queues, yet support was stronger: Oct 1-5 recorded 902,300 sessions on the XPeng platform, and NIO swaps topped 183,600 on Oct 5, a record. In Jinan, operators and drivers alike feel this shift from being able to charge to charging well - whoever thickens the service first seizes the next leg.
Policy Backing
Three ministries - Finance, Industry and Information Technology, and Transport - launched the 2026 county-level charging and battery-swap shortfall-remedy pilot, supporting 59 joint pilot counties under the Hundred Counties, Thousand Stations, Ten Thousand Chargers program toward township-wide coverage. Central rewards back pilot counties and encourage green power: solar stations whose self-generated self-used electricity exceeds 40% of total charging can be counted at 1.2x, unlocking rural EV demand.
From Coverage to Quality
The winning move is shifting from selling equipment to delivering service. Charging-plus, solar-storage-charging, unified build-and-serve and community hosting all embed a single refill into daily life and city operation. Whoever extends one charge into a worry-free one-stop service pulls ahead in a saturated market. In Jinan, township residents fold charging into market days and family visits; the operator keeps its maintenance radius small so broken poles get fixed, or building them was pointless. Sinking poles into neighborhoods is true outreach.