China’s EV Charging Network Expansion Hit Warp Speed In 2025

• China hit 20 million EV chargers in 2025, including both private and public stalls.
• It took China 13 years to reach the first million chargers, 5 years to reach 10 million and 1.5 years to reach 20 million.
• Around 4.7 million are public chargers and 15 million fall into the private charger category.

Most of the electric vehicles produced in China are sold on the domestic market, giving buyers seemingly endless choice of attractive, affordable new models. Those cars not only cost much less than in the West, but charging them also isn’t a problem, given the country’s rapidly expanding charging network.

According to China’s National Energy Administration (NEA), the country exceeded 20 million EV chargers in 2025. Around 4.7 million are public chargers and 15.35 million are private, enough to support up to 40 million plug-in vehicles. But what makes this statistic even more remarkable is the fact that it went from 10 to 20 million chargers in 18 months.

It took China 13 years from the first charger being installed in the country to reaching 1 million chargers in June 2019. Then it only took five more years to reach 10 million; now, China has doubled that in a year and a half, while also increasing the network’s average charging speed.

Speeds went up 33% in 2025 compared to 2024, reaching 46.5 kilowatts—impressive when you consider around three-quarters of these chargers are private and are likely not DC fast chargers. Typical Level 2 home chargers don’t exceed 22 kW, and the most common units usually have an output of around 7 kW or 11 kW. 

China currently has the world’s most powerful EV chargers, which can supply 1 megawatt of power or more for the handful of passenger vehicles that support it. We went to China in 2025 and saw how fast megawatt charging really is, capable of recharging some BYD models in about five minutes.

The NEA report also notes that 71,500 chargers were added to national highway service areas, which are now covered up to 98% and 19 provinces have apparently “achieved full coverage of charging facilities in every township,” although we don’t know what full coverage means exactly.

Over time, China has shifted from supporting the purchase of new electric vehicles—Reuters says EV purchase incentives have completely ended in some areas in 2025—to helping build out charging infrastructure instead. The government will subsidize up to 30% of the cost of a new charging station, which partly explains the rapid expansion of its network.

On paper, Europe’s public charging infrastructure doesn’t look as developed. There are now over 1 million public chargers in the European Union, and the average charger density is lower than in China. According to the Alternative Fuels Data Center (AFDC), the U.S. had 173,000 public AC charging stalls and an additional 68,000 DC fast charging points at the end of 2025. The latter grew by around a third last year and the AFDC predicts that the number could reach 90,000 by the end of 2026.