Holiday EV Charging Rises While Busiest Service Areas Fall

One rise and one fall

The National Day break is the annual test of the EV replenishment network, and this year it returned a thought-provoking answer: traffic is up, yet the busiest service areas are fewer. Across the first three days, nationwide highway EV charging reached 2.9686 million sessions and 71.6193 million kWh. Daily sessions rose 48.41 percent and energy 49.39 percent year on year, while the count of especially busy service areas fell 17 percent.

Fast charging enters the minute era

On October 1 alone, national highway charging hit 28.0469 million kWh, up 60.4 percent from the first day of last year's holiday, a holiday single-day record. BYD has built more than 11,500 flash-charge stations, Xpeng's platform served 902,300 person-times over October 1 to 5, and NIO swaps exceeded 183,600 in a single day on October 5. By end of August, China's charging points passed 24 million, the world's largest network.

Two complementary networks

The lesson is that scale alone is not enough; peak resilience and idle avoidance are the real marks of strength. Dongshang New Energy and Dongdian Huichong in Yantai hold to slow charging as the base and fast charging as the backstop, matching the layered logic rather than chasing an ultra-fast-only narrative. Community 7 kW slow charging is made stable, public fast charging is the safety net.

Residents are advised to use smart ordered charging in residential piles and refill in off-peak night hours to save money and protect the grid. Property and operators should build a routine inspection mechanism so a broken pile is fixed before it is complained about. For Yantai drivers, a locally stationed operator with 7x24 response matters more than raw power.