Produced by ZhiNeng Auto
On the first day of the National Day holiday, NEV (New Energy Vehicle) trips on highways nationwide reached 17.8 million, 1.8 times the daily average. At the Zaoyang North Service Area, the queue reached about 200 vehicles, and drivers were asked to leave after charging to 80%, with no available recharging points for over a hundred kilometers ahead. This sparked heated debates on Weibo! Chinese people have few holidays, and the National Day and Spring Festival holidays see concentrated travel. Coupled with the high popularity of EVs now, with a penetration rate exceeding 60%, this is not surprising at all. There is a structural mismatch in the recharging network during peak periods: there are more piles, but everyone uses them simultaneously, and the power supply and capacity cannot keep up.
Part I · Why 80%?
Lithium battery charging follows a charging curve! During DC fast charging, the charging pile supplies power to the vehicle, and the BMS (Battery Management System) continuously monitors cell voltage, temperature, and SoC (State of Charge), determining the maximum current it can receive accordingly. The technology is not complicated; as the SoC increases, to control voltage and battery stress, the current must be stepped down. The charging curves for different vehicles are designed such that at around 80% to 85% SoC, the charging power drops significantly.
This forms the technical basis for limiting the charge. In a service area with long queues, continuing to charge a vehicle with a high SoC yields diminishing returns in terms of range, while occupying the charging spot for an increasingly longer time.
Note: In 2026, Chinese enterprises have made some adjustments to the charging power after 80%. The number and proportion of these vehicles currently account for a minority in the total ownership, which we will explain later. Service area manager Xu Yixing is also based on statistical data, noting that when the power battery is nearly fully charged, the charging speed slows down significantly, and the final stage takes a long time.
Limiting a single charge to 80% results in a shorter occupation time per vehicle, allowing more vehicles to be served in the same period. We can calculate the turnover rate: 12 piles, 24 charging guns, and 48 numbers per round are the actual configurations at this service area during peak periods.
Assuming each vehicle occupies a spot for 30 minutes, one round of 48 vehicles takes two hours; if the occupation time is extended to 45 minutes, one round takes three and a half hours. For the same two pile spots, the daily reception capacity differs significantly.
Part II · Results of the Guangdong Pilot Program
In Hubei, manual guidance is used to direct vehicles to leave, while Guangdong is testing automatic power cut-off at a set point.
According to estimates, after implementing an 85% automatic power cut-off in some pilot service areas in Guangdong, the turnover rate of charging piles increased by 30%, and the queuing time was shortened by nearly half. There are also reports stating that the turnover rate increased by over 30% and the queuing time was reduced by 60%. The two sets of data differ slightly, but the trend is consistent. The difference lies in the execution method.
At Zaoyang North, staff members step forward to guide vehicles to leave, cooperating with machines for automatic current limiting, which is a combination of human and machine. Guangdong's 85% rule involves automatic power cut-off at the set point; if the owner does not move the car, the power is cut off. Voyah CEO Lu Fang also suggested charging fees for occupying piles overtime. From a management cost perspective, automatic power cut-off is more convenient. Current limiting requires human monitoring, whereas a single power cut-off does not.
During peak periods like the National Day holiday, manpower is the tightest resource. There is another subtle difference between the two approaches. Manual guidance is flexible; if a driver claims they cannot make it to the next station, staff can let them go at their discretion. Automatic power cut-off is a one-size-fits-all approach; it cuts off exactly at the set point with no room for compromise.
This time, Hubei dispatched dedicated personnel for traffic guidance, issuing numbers vehicle by vehicle, calling numbers in rounds, and having staff guide the entry routes back and forth. During the return peak, mobile energy storage charging vehicles and mobile charging robots were also deployed, adopting an 'electricity finding vehicles' approach to turn over the limited gun spots in the service area faster. Guangdong's approach relies more on rules. Voyah CEO Lu Fang suggested charging fees for occupying piles overtime, using price mechanisms to replace manual intervention.
Part III · Should EREV Owners Give Up Charging Spots?
The other half of the anger on the trending topics comes from EREV (Extended-Range Electric Vehicle) and PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle) owners. The demands of BEV (Battery Electric Vehicle) owners are easy to understand: they have no option to refuel and keep going, yet a vehicle next to them that can refuel is also waiting for a charging gun.
After queuing for several hours, this disparity is amplified. With 200 vehicles in line, if you can refuel and keep going but insist on queuing, the overall cost of charging at a highway service area, including service fees, is not much cheaper than refueling. Deliberately queuing to save electricity is not worth the loss.
The reason given by EREV owners is that road conditions during the National Day holiday are highly variable, and they might encounter hours-long traffic jams at any time. Coupled with the sharp increase in power consumption for air conditioning due to autumn and winter temperature drops, charging only to 80% might not be enough to reach the next supply point.
Charging piles are public supporting facilities, and the legal right to use them should not be treated differently based on vehicle type. A more feasible approach is to separate courtesy from rules. During extreme peaks, it is worth advocating that EREV and PHEV owners with sufficient fuel choose to refuel and continue driving. It is more effective for the service area to publicly and consistently enforce the number-calling system, charging limit rules, and the handling of occupied spots after full charge, rather than letting drivers blame each other in the queue.
Data from the Ministry of Transport press conference on September 24: As of now, a total of about 89,000 charging facilities have been built in highway service areas nationwide, basically covering all service areas. Among them, there are about 22,000 high-power charging facilities.
From January to August this year, about 11,000 new high-power charging guns were added, equivalent to the total sum of all previous years. However, it is still difficult to meet the demand! Especially the demand during the National Day and Spring Festival holidays (the magnitude of the demand side needs to be compared). On the first day of the National Day holiday, the number of NEV trips on highways nationwide reached 17.8 million, 1.8 times the usual level.
Data from the National Energy Administration: Statistics of 62,700 highway charging facilities included in the monitoring platform show that on the first day of the National Day holiday, the national highway charging volume reached 28.0469 million kWh, a year-on-year increase of 60.4%, setting a new historical high for a single day during holidays.
Regarding the nominal power of the guns, charging spots at the same station may share power equipment, and the entire station is also limited by the capacity of the connected power grid. The average power of public charging facilities is only 45.5 kW, which cannot effectively meet the needs of fast recharging scenarios such as highways during holidays and hot spots in cities. Increasing the number of guns does not necessarily shorten the queue proportionally; piling up low-power guns means less power allocated to each; installing only high-power piles means the station's power supply capacity cannot keep up, and it is also waiting for capacity expansion. The 'Three-Year Doubling Action Plan for the Service Capacity of Electric Vehicle Charging Facilities,' jointly issued by the National Development and Reform Commission and other departments, aims to build 28 million charging facilities nationwide by the end of 2027, providing over 300 million kW of public charging capacity.
Focusing on highways, the plan proposes building and renovating 40,000 ultra-fast combined charging guns of 60 kW or above in highway service areas (including parking areas). The so-called ultra-fast combination means that the charging station has both fast charging equipment of 60 kW or above and high-power equipment of 250 kW or above. In February this year, the Ministry of Transport also provided more detailed execution criteria in a policy Q&A. Newly built charging facilities will comprehensively adopt fast charging equipment of 60 kW and above, of which high-power charging facilities will account for no less than 25%. In principle, updated and renovated charging facilities should all adopt high-power equipment. Promote the construction of high-power facilities in service areas along the 71118 main corridors of the national highway network and major freight transport corridors.
Strengthen the connection between charging network planning and transportation facility planning, consider the power capacity expansion needs of charging facilities in service areas during the new construction and renovation of highways, and carry out power expansion and renovation simultaneously. This is why this round of planning emphasizes both guns and power simultaneously; if the two are not built synchronously, the queuing time cannot be reduced.
The 'one policy per area' approach was proposed during this year's Spring Festival travel rush. It guides local authorities to formulate guarantee plans for particularly busy charging service areas, adopting measures such as adding mobile emergency charging equipment, guiding NEVs to charge at opposite-direction service areas, utilizing charging facilities around highway entrances and exits, and scientifically optimizing the charging time per vehicle for quantitative charging.
During the National Day holiday, the requirements of the Ministry of Transport went a step further, requiring local authorities to provide mobile charging facilities for particularly busy service areas to alleviate demand, and to dynamically update the list of particularly busy charging service areas. The assessment on October 4 showed that 30 service areas nationwide are expected to be particularly busy with charging, concentrated in provinces such as Hebei, Henan, and Liaoning. Mobile energy storage charging vehicles and mobile charging robots are the implemented forms of this approach.
Conclusion
The 80% charging limit has sparked controversy because it simultaneously touches upon two reasonable things. Those waiting in line need to be served as soon as possible, while those currently charging need to be confident they can drive to the next station. Given the on-site conditions at Zaoyang North, with no recharging points for over a hundred kilometers ahead, 200 vehicles waiting, and 24 guns turning over less than twice an hour.
Currently, there are no clear detailed rules for charging pile allocation during peak periods in China, no prioritization of rigid demand, and no vehicle type diversion rules. These are all being explored. Tiered electricity pricing, overtime occupation fees, online reservation diversion, and dividing BEV and hybrid queuing areas are all viable solutions.