China’s two largest power utilities, State Grid and China Southern Power Grid, are investing heavily in the expansion of charging infrastructure. State Grid plans to provide 2.7 billion yuan this year alone, and China Southern Power Grid plans to provide 25.1 billion yuan within four years.

State Grid wants to build 78,000 new charging points, including 53,000 charging sites in private residential buildings and 18,000 for public use. China Southern Power Grid is planning to build 150 large charging parks and around 380,000 charging points over the next four years.

Wang Yanfang, a State Grid spokesperson, explained that “the move is expected to boost the revenue from sales of new energy vehicles by over 20 billion yuan and foster the production of power products and components, as well as upstream and downstream industries of NEVs.”

After subsidies for new electric vehicles (NEVs) were cut last year, electric car sales plummeted. The Chinese government recently proposed extending these, as well as trying to find different ways to maintain higher uptake of electric vehicles.