Long wait for charging electric cars during holiday
A new energy car owner took close to 16 hours - double the usual 8 hours - to drive from Shenzhen city in south China's Guangdong Province to Hunan Province on October 1, the first day of the seven-day National Day holiday, as the highway service stations were packed with people queuing up to charge the cars, CCTV reported on Monday.
A video clip shows people queuing up for charging at a highway service station.
It takes three or four hours to secure a spot for charging during the holiday.
The car owner told CCTV that she decided to drive home as the traffic appeared to be smooth according to the navigation app, but ended up spending four hours queuing and another one hour charging at a station in Leiyang in Hunan.
She started suggesting to other drivers who arrived after her to look for another station as they risked waiting at least three hours for charging. She said she avoided the restroom in the four hours at the station over fears about queue jumping.
A netizen suggested that high-speed railways and taxis were a better option for long-haul trips as new energy cars were not a wise choice, at least for the moment.
A new energy car charging station.
According to the State Grid Corporation of China, daily charging on domestic highways reached a record high of 1.4292 million kilowatts per hour on the first day of the holiday, four times higher than usual. The total charging amount on the electric charging network was up 59 percent, compared with the first three days of last year's National Day holiday.
