During the National Day holiday in Mainland China, self-driving travelers, both owners of fuel vehicles and new energy vehicles, are concerned about traffic congestion. However, new energy vehicle owners have an additional worry to deal with: waiting in long queues to charge their vehicles.
On the first day of the holiday (October 1st), it is estimated that there will be 17.8 million trips made by new energy vehicles. During peak travel times, service areas along highways in many places experienced a concentration of new energy vehicles waiting in line to charge. Some vehicle owners had to take a numbered ticket and wait, with charging times varying from a few tens of minutes to several hours.
Many netizens also shared their “misery” of charging their electric vehicles.
On the evening of September 30th, there were long lines of new energy vehicles at the North Zaoyang Service Area in Hubei. According to Dahe Daily, Ms. Huang, a vehicle owner, mentioned that there were already over 60 cars in front of her when she got her number, and she waited for over an hour to charge her vehicle. By the time she left, the line had extended to the fifth round, with an estimated 200 cars waiting at one point. Some car owners even posted photos of queuing in the early morning hours, showing that the queue number had reached A140, while the on-site calling had only reached 29.
In addition, due to the high number of vehicles needing to charge, service areas imposed limits on the amount of electricity each vehicle could receive, stopping at 80% charge. While usually it only takes 20 minutes to complete a charge, the charging speed on that day was noticeably slower.
Jiemu News reported that Mr. Liu, a resident of Chengdu, mentioned that on September 30th, while driving to Inner Mongolia, he encountered two service areas where charging was suspended due to heavy traffic. It was not until around 6 p.m. at the Lingjiang Service Area when he finally got the number 99 for charging, waiting for over 5 hours (until around 11:30 p.m.) before finally being able to charge, exclaiming that “everyone was waiting in confusion.”
Another vehicle owner who set off from Yanji, Jilin, also reported that they had to queue at multiple service areas along the way, with the longest wait exceeding 3 hours.
Some vehicle owners, due to insufficient range, were unable to reach the next service area and it was difficult to exit the highway to find other charging stations, leaving them stranded at the service area in a state of waiting.
A netizen shared an incident where an electric vehicle on the G65 Baomao Expressway in the Dazhou North Service Area, with only 1% battery remaining, came to a stop on the roadside near the charging pile, eventually needing assistance from service area staff and kind-hearted fellow car owners to push the vehicle to the charging pile.
In addition to the long wait times, the decrease in charging speed has further heightened the anxiety of owners.
A plug-in hybrid vehicle owner at the North Zaoyang Service Area mentioned that typically it would take about 20 minutes to charge, but due to limitations in charging power and the system automatically stopping at 80% charge, the overall charging time had significantly increased.
Another vehicle owner stated that in some service areas, the entire process from queuing to a full charge could take several hours.
Forecast by relevant departments anticipates that during the return peak period from October 5th to 6th, the demand for charging at service areas will further escalate. The peak charging periods are expected to be from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. on October 5th, and from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on October 6th.