By Kate Yuan

(JW Insights) Feb 10 -- China’s rising demand for public charging piles and the seriously insufficient supplies in the European and American markets have brought enormous opportunities for related Chinese companies, according to a JW Insights report this week.

China’s total charging facilities reached 5.21 million units by the end of 2022, showed the statistics from the China Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Alliance (EVCIPA). In 2022 alone, about 2.593 million charging piles were newly installed, and 6.887 million EVs were sold. The charging infrastructure can basically meet the rapid development of new energy vehicles.

However, the newly built charging piles in 2022 are mainly privately owned, and only 37,000 are public.

A recent notice from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and seven other ministries and departments requires 80% of public transport to use new energy vehicles, including buses, taxis, sanitation cars, express delivery, and urban logistics distribution.

The notice also said to build a charging and swapping infrastructure system, and strive to achieve a ratio of 1:1 between the newly added public charging piles (standard piles) and EVs (standard vehicles) in the public domain.

The current pile-vehicle incremental ratio is 1:2.7, and the construction of charging piles will have to speed up considering the booming EV market.

Driven by the above goals, CITIC Securities estimated the market size of public charging piles is expected to reach RMB48.7 billion ($7.2 billion ) in the next three years.

In the overseas markets, there are huge gaps and demands are emerging fast for charging piles. Europe, another major EV market, is still in the phase of reducing subsidies for buying EVs, while the US has just begun large-scale subsidies.

In 2022, EV sales hit 992,000 in the US, and the annual penetration rate was 6.9%. With the gradual implementation of the subsidy policy, the US EV market will embrace considerable growth, which is bound to bring huge demand for charging piles.

Statistics from the US Department of Energy showed in Q1 of 2021, the country built 115,900 public charging piles, accounting for about 85% of the total number, and about 19,900 were private ones. The pile-vehicle ratio was about 1:18, which is far behind that in China.

In order to boost charging infrastructure, the Biden administration has set ambitious goals to install an additional 500,000 charging stations by 2030.

Europe, as an important auto production base globally, has seen steady growth in the EV market with 2.6 million sold last year. It is estimated that by 2025, there will be a demand for 351,000 new charging piles in Europe, with a market size of approximately $5.3 billion.

China’s charging pile products are highly cost-effective after years of development, and have attracted orders from overseas markets in addition to meeting the needs of the domestic market.

Industry insiders said overseas charging pile standards are different from those in China. Products must pass CE, UL and other certifications with long waiting cycles. Three to six months in Europe, half a year to one year in the US. The price is also high, 1.5-3 times the domestic price, which is expected to bring out higher profits than selling in China.

Some Chinese companies, such as ATC (奥特迅) and Autel (道通科技), have obtained overseas orders. Orders for Autel's DC pile products came from Europe, the US, Singapore, and Australia.