In October 2025, data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers showed that new energy vehicles (NEVs) accounted for 51.6% of all new car sales that month—a historic milestone marking the first time their market share surpassed 50%. This watershed moment signals that NEVs have shifted from being a policy-driven “new phenomenon” to entering a fully market-driven “main track.”

However, in sharp contrast to the surging sales figures are the growing pains of the charging experience. Recent surveys indicate that, amid rapid expansion, the charging infrastructure sector is revealing several pressing challenges.

01 Service Fees Without Service

The proliferation of various fee categories is poorly aligned with the actual operation, maintenance support, and user experience provided. This disconnect exposes ambiguities in how “service value” is defined within business models and highlights gaps in regulation—fundamentally reflecting an industry that, in its early-stage expansion, has overlooked core user concerns.

02 Idle Fee Without Standards

With rules that lack transparency and are inconsistently enforced, operators have yet to strike a balance between improving asset utilization and fulfilling their obligation to properly inform consumers. This imbalance easily leads to disputes and undermines the credibility of the entire industry.

03 Widespread “Zombie Chargers”

These nonfunctional or abandoned chargers represent substantial waste of social resources and directly affect user experience. At a deeper level, they expose the absence of sustainable long-term operations mechanisms and effective exit strategies in the current market.

These “last-mile” bottlenecks have become a critical barrier restricting industry health and dampening consumer confidence.

From quantitative accumulation to qualitative transformation, the industry urgently needs a thorough, holistic review and coordinated evolution. This includes comprehensive upgrades in technical standards, business models, operational efficiency, and regulatory sophistication. A sector-wide hub is needed—one capable of transcending siloed perspectives and uniting cross-sector consensus to turn fragmented attempts into a clear, collective pathway.

Meeting the Future at the Intersection

The complexity of these challenges points precisely to the direction of future progress. Behind the industry’s pain points lie the unresolved gaps between technology application, business-model innovation, and user needs.

The 2026 World Charging Technology and Facility Exhibition aims to elevate industry thinking beyond the question of “how to build a charging pile” and toward deeper, structural issues:

• How can intelligent operation and maintenance fundamentally eliminate “zombie chargers” and improve asset efficiency?

• How can fair, transparent, and incentive-based service rules be designed to balance the interests of operators, EV owners, and site hosts?

• How can integrated technologies—such as PV-storage-charging solutions and V2G—transform charging stations from cost centers into energy nodes that stabilize the grid and generate added value?

By bringing together operators, utilities, technology innovators, investors, and policy researchers from around the world, the exhibition will form a high-trust, high-density network of collaboration. Such a platform can incubate systemic solutions to regional and structural challenges, with cross-disciplinary insights sparking the next generation of sustainable business models.

The evolution of charging networks has already gone far beyond simply providing energy for vehicles. Charging infrastructure has become the critical bridge linking the transportation revolution with the energy revolution—a distributed cornerstone of the future power system.

Therefore, optimizing the charging experience and improving operational quality is not just about reducing range anxiety. It is a systemic response to society’s broader dual-carbon (carbon peaking and carbon neutrality) goals.

A more efficient, intelligent, and user-centered charging network will directly accelerate NEV adoption, advance green and low-carbon transformation in the transportation sector, and provide essential flexibility to absorb more variable renewable energy into the grid.

Looking Ahead to 2026

The World Charging Technology and Facility Exhibition invites all participants across the industry ecosystem to join us. Together, we can turn today’s challenges into opportunities that define the next generation of green mobility infrastructure—and jointly steer the industry toward a smoother, smarter, and more sustainable future.