China's State Grid to build 120,000 more charging poles
China's State Grid will expand its electric vehicle (EV) charging network by building 120,000 charging poles by 2020. The expansion plans, which include installing 10,000 charging stations, will mean there is always a charging facility within a 1km radius in major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou, Chairman Shu Yinbiao has said. The company will also expand its existing 11,000 km intercity road charging network by 36,000 km within the same timeframe, Yinbiao added.

China's State Grid will build more charging facilities and expand public fast-charge networks for electric vehicles in future years, the company's chairman said in Beijing Sunday.

The company plans to build 10,000 charging stations and 120,000 charging poles by 2020, Shu Yinbiao, chairman of the State Grid, told a forum.

The company will expand its public fast-charge networks for electric cars in major Chinese cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou, where a charging facility will be found within a radius of less than 1 km, according to Shu.

By 2015, the State Grid had built fast-charge networks covering 11,000 kilometers of highways between major cities, and it would further expand the networks to cover another 36,000 kilometers of inter-city highways by 2020, he said.

The company has also built an online system that helps electric vehicle drivers locate charging facilities nearby and pay charging fees, which has so far connected more than 80,000 charging poles, said Shu.

Data from the National Energy Administration showed that China had 107,000 charging poles for electric vehicles by the end of October this year, up 118 percent from a year ago. Besides, there are also more than 170,000 private ones.

According to China's 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020), the country will build a nationwide charging-station network that will fulfill the power demands of five million electric vehicles by 2020.