(Yicai) Feb. 24 -- More Chinese migrant workers were able to return home driving their electric cars more conveniently for the Chinese New Year holiday this year, as the country's charging network further expands across rural areas and small towns.

Xu Qiang works in Guangzhou, but his hometown is in Hunan province. Every year for the past three years, he went back home with his electric vehicle for a journey of about 700 kilometers to celebrate the Chinese New Year holiday with his family, he told Yicai.

Three years ago, he needed an extension cord to charge the car at home, which took about two days for a full charge, as there was only one fast-charging station in his town and the other town nearby. This year, the number of fast-charging stations reached nine, with the closest one being only a kilometer away. "The convenience of charging your EV in rural areas is almost the same as in cities now," he said.

"Three to four years ago, it was common to wait in line for four hours to charge your EV one hour" from the working place to hometown, Xu noted. “Now, unless there is severe traffic congestion, you charge immediately upon arrival.”

China added nearly 7.3 million EV charging stations last year, up 72 percent from 2024, bringing the country's total to more than 20 million at the end of last year, according to data released by the National Energy Administration on Jan. 21. It took 13 years to reach the one-million milestone, five years to grow from one million to 10 million, and only 18 months to go from 10 million to 20 million.

The proportion of EV charging stations in the top 10 Chinese provinces dropped to 66 percent last year from 71 percent in 2022, with 19 provinces achieving full coverage to rural areas as of Dec. 31, 2025.

On Feb. 15, the first day of the nine-day Chinese New Year holiday, the nationwide charging volume on highways reached 15.28 million kilowatt-hours, up 116 percent from a year earlier, the NEA said on Feb. 16. In the first three days, 1.4 million EVs were charged on highways, up 63 percent from the same period last year.

The NEA will promote a 'three-year doubling' initiative, aiming to have 28 million charging facilities by the end of 2027, which is expected to drive investments of over CNY200 billion (USD29 billion), Xing Yiteng, deputy director of the development planning department of the NEA, said at a press conference last month.

Editor: Futura Costaglione