China sees that one way to reach its goal of seeing five million electric cars hit the roads by 2020 is by speeding up the nation's car charging network facilities construction.
While China has shown considerable progress when it comes to building its car charging infrastructure, it still lacks the needed coordination as expressed by deputy head Zheng Zhajie of the National Energy Administration.
Apart from improving the charging facilities, the Chinese government also sees the importance of supporting green vehicles as a way to curb the nation's unhealthy levels of pollution.
One way to enhance coordination is by equipping its public car park facilities with electric car charging station with at least one unit to be placed in every ten locations. This shall be supported by a guideline from the State Council or cabinet once the infrastructure becomes fully operational.
"It's like with phone chargers, it's a bit all over the place," said Zhajie. "Everyone has a pile of different chargers and a pile of batteries. Now we're trying to improve things, moving towards unifying and standardizing."
Providing motorists with fast and easy access to charging stations is believed to be a critical factor in increasing the adoption of electric cars. For decades, drivers have been used to simply pull over at the nearest gas station whenever there's a need to refill gas. The idea of seeing themselves stuck on the road with their car battery running low and finding themselves a bit trapped when a charging station is out of sight are deterrents to the consumers' eventual adoption of the electric car technology.
Early in January, China successfully completed the installation of 50 car-charging stations along the route that connects Beijing and Shanghai, two of the nation's largest cities. However, the country faces huge technical deterrents in promoting the electric vehicle market. One of these is the non-uniform standards set by manufacturers.
In April, China opened its electric car market to Tesla Motors following the company's export of its first cars in the country. Elon Musk reveals that China's "misperception" on charging facilities continue to be a challenge.
The luxury car maker signed an agreement with China Unicom in a bid to provide its 400 retail outlets with charging stations. Likewise, BMW also built its own charging network for its i8 and i3 electric cars as part of a pilot project in Shanghai.
Amidst consumers' concerns on the nation's car charging network issues, China sees a dramatic increase in the sales of its green cars which they believed have almost quadrupled from the sales figures earned in 2014.
As the country works its way to achieve the goals that are set to be reached by 2020, they also plan to gradually set stricter standards on vehicle fuel efficiency. Eventually, they hope that such standards will exceed those that are set in the U.S. and will equally match the ones that are set in Japan.
