Charging piles for electric cars mushrooming in China

BEIJING, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- The number of charging piles for electric cars has been surging in China amid the country's campaign to promote new-energy vehicles (NEVs) and fight pollution.

By the end of October this year, 195,000 public charging piles for electric cars had been built in China, 82 percent more than the number at the end of October 2016, an official said.

The number of privately-owned charging piles for electric cars saw an even bigger increase over the period, up 214 percent year on year to 188,000, Guo Wei, an official from National Energy Administration, said at a forum in Beijing on Saturday.

In China, the world's largest auto market, the government is a staunch supporter of NEVs, seeing them as a way to ease pressure on the environment.

The government is mulling plans to ban the production and sale of diesel and petrol cars, but no timetable and details have yet been unveiled.

A slew of measures, including tax exemptions, discounts for car purchases and an order for government organizations to buy more new energy cars, are in place to encourage the use of NEVs.

Last year, China sold 507,000 NEVs, an increase of 53 percent year on year. Sales of pure electric vehicles surged 65.1 percent year on year to 409,000, accounting for 80 percent of new energy vehicle sales, official data showed.

An earlier guideline by the State Council said China would build more than 12,000 new charging stations before 2020 to fulfill the demands of over 5 million NEVs. Enditem