As China slowly positions itself as the world leader in electric car production, they are also working on the necessary infrastructure to charge its electric car stock as it becomes more and more popular in the PRC.
The Chairman of China’s state electric grid, Mr. Liu Zhen Ya, was quote as saying “This year we are going to work closely with electric car producers to speedup the development of electric charging stations. Previously we only had electric car charging stations in Shanghai, Tianjin and Xi’an which were being used in trials, Tianjin’s electric charging network will expand to five stations within 2010”.
The current investment for an electric charging station is around 3 million RMB. Also this year the State Grid will be working on a second generation network which will come online in around June, which will also have a sophisticated monitoring center.
It appears that electric cars are going to be the next big thing for China’s transportation system, and will ween China off the oil imports over the next ten years as reliance grows on the electric grid. Electric cars are bound to grow in popularity as soon as Chinese consumers learn of their money saving benefits.
The upcoming BYD E6 can reach a full charge in 2 hours, and can travel for around 300km on that charge, and will need just over 23rmb’s worth of electricity to reach a full charge. Compare this to the average traditional gasoline car that probably averages 8L of fuel per 100km, fuel now averages 6.66rmb in Beijing, thus traveling around 300km will cost just over 159RMB.
The Chinese State Grid has made a loss for two years running, and is pinning its hopes on expanding into the electric car charging industry alongside car producers. This will give China a relatively independent economy, free from the reliance on Middle Eastern oil which rises in price every day, and will hopefully make motoring more accessible to the nations interior.