Every year ahead of the Lunar New Year around January, tens of millions of Chinese take to the road to travel to their rural hometowns to celebrate the holidays. The journey home is often marked by heavy traffic congestion, which is a bigger burden to Electric Vehicle (EV) drivers than to those who own fossil-fuel-powered cars.
Many EV drivers either line up for hours for a spot at an EV charging station, or scramble to find one. What’s worse, the infrastructure is unreliable — 25% of the charging stations along China’s highways malfunctioned prior to the Lunar New Year this year due to lack of maintenance, as per the local news outlet TMTPost. Moreover, many of them lack a fast charging option.