China's NEV (New Energy Vehicle) industry is experiencing rapid growth, with market sales and vehicle ownership continuing to rise, placing higher demands on charging infrastructure. Currently, the pace of energy replenishment facility construction lags behind the development of the vehicle market. Issues such as charging difficulties and long waiting times remain prominent, still serving as core pain points restricting industry growth and users' willingness to purchase vehicles.
Given China's vast territory and diverse driving scenarios, a single energy replenishment model can no longer cover all-scenario demands. Building a comprehensive energy replenishment system with coordinated and complementary charging and battery swapping has become an industry consensus.
Core Insights
China's NEV (New Energy Vehicle) industry is experiencing rapid growth, with market sales and vehicle ownership continuing to rise, placing higher demands on charging infrastructure. Currently, the pace of energy replenishment facility construction lags behind the development of the vehicle market. Issues such as charging difficulties and long waiting times remain prominent, still serving as core pain points restricting industry growth and users' willingness to purchase vehicles.
Given China's vast territory and diverse driving scenarios, a single energy replenishment model can no longer cover all-scenario demands. Building a comprehensive energy replenishment system with coordinated and complementary charging and battery swapping has become an industry consensus.
Based on this, this report analyzes the charging and battery swapping industry from the perspectives of industry overview, development status, and future trends.
Current Status and Trends of the Charging Industry Development
Industry Landscape: From the perspective of operators, the market share is highly concentrated, with leading enterprises such as TELD, Star Charge, and YKC accounting for 49% of the market share. Meanwhile, public charging infrastructure shows a trend of regional concentration and high power output, with southern cities maintaining a high level of charging pile ownership. Regarding the coverage rate of DC charging piles, the average coverage rate of public DC piles in megacities and super-large cities exceeds 80%, far surpassing that of Tier I and Tier I cities.
Technological Status and Development Trends: AC charging is gradually shifting towards high power, with some automakers starting to equip 6.6kW/11kW onboard OBC (On-Board Charger) systems as standard. Megawatt-level flash charging technology is expanding rapidly, becoming the focus of industry competition. Players such as BYD, Zeekr, Chery, and CATL have successively released or implemented megawatt-level fast charging solutions, upgrading the energy replenishment experience to "gas station-level" convenience. To further enhance the charging service experience, many regions are responding to policy calls and actively promoting the construction of an integrated charging and swapping network. At the application level, static wireless charging and mobile charging robots continue to gain popularity, with multiple enterprises having completed product implementation and business layout. Meanwhile, new technologies such as integrated photovoltaic, energy storage, and charging stations, as well as V2G (Vehicle-to-Grid) interaction, are developing rapidly, effectively reducing the reliance of energy replenishment facilities on the public power grid.
Current Status and Trends of the Battery Swapping Industry Development
Industry Landscape: As the core link in the industry chain, battery swapping operators connect multiple entities upstream and downstream. The battery bank model, centered on "vehicle-battery separation," has become the mainstream operational model in the industry. Currently, the number of battery swapping stations nationwide has exceeded 6,500, with NIO being the main force in construction. Meanwhile, mainstream automakers are entering the field one after another, launching multiple battery-swapping vehicle models.
Technological Status and Development Trends: In terms of technological routes, passenger vehicles mainly adopt chassis battery swapping, while commercial vehicles mostly use side battery swapping solutions. Currently, the battery swapping model, in addition to developing in the passenger vehicle sector, also has development prospects in commercial scenarios with high energy replenishment frequency, strong timeliness requirements, and high power consumption. In the future, battery-swapping private cars, battery-swapping ride-hailing cars, battery-swapping heavy trucks, and battery-swapping two-wheelers will develop in parallel.
China's NEV passenger vehicle market has maintained a rapid expansion trend for a long time. In 2025, NEV sales exceeded 15 million units, and ownership climbed to 43.97 million units. However, the expansion pace of charging infrastructure lags behind vehicle growth. Although the vehicle-to-charger ratio has slightly dropped to 2.19 in recent years, the gap in supply-demand matching still persists—the speed of charging supporting construction is difficult to keep up with the explosive growth of NEV ownership. The shortcomings in charging supply are prominent, and the imbalance in the growth rate between vehicles and chargers has become a core pain point restricting the NEV usage experience.
Domestic public charging infrastructure shows two clear development trends: regional concentration and high-power equipment. From a geographical perspective, charging resources are highly concentrated in the eastern coastal provinces with strong NEV consumption. Among the top 10 provinces and cities in public charging pile ownership in 2025, Guangdong leads by a wide margin with a total of 802,000 units, followed closely by Zhejiang and Jiangsu. The uneven distribution of charging piles among regions is highly significant.
In terms of power iteration, the rapid popularization of fast charging technology promotes the continuous optimization of the DC pile power structure. Between 2023 and 2025, although the proportion of mainstream 100-150kW power piles still ranks first, it has declined year by year. The proportion of ultra-high voltage and high-power DC piles above 250kW has surged from 7% to 29%, while the proportion of low-power DC piles below 50kW continues to shrink. The industry as a whole is accelerating its transformation towards a fast charging route with high power and short-time energy replenishment.