China grew its stock of public fast chargers for electric cars from 1.2 million to 1.6 million in 2024, accounting for roughly 80% of the global increase, according to International Energy Agency data. By the end of 2025 it stood at 2.2 million, per the Global EV Outlook 2026 published in May. Across all power classes, about 65% of the world's more than 5 million public charging points were in China at the end of 2024.
The absolute count, though, is the weakest metric available. The stock relative to the fleet says more: in China more than one public charging point per ten EVs at the end of 2024, against one per 13 across the EU. Installed power per vehicle is better still — the IEA estimates more than 3 kW in China, 2.6 kW in the EU and less than 1.5 kW in the US.
Housing explains the gap. In Chinese cities many drivers depend on public charging; the 15 cities with the most charging points hold more than half the national stock. In Europe that share is 25%. In Germany almost 60% of people live in apartments, which makes public build-out especially relevant there.
Europe expanded its sub-150 kW fast-charger stock by nearly 50% in 2024 to 71,000 and added more than 77,000 ultra-fast points, 60% more than the year before. In the US, fast and ultra-fast chargers went from 40,000 to just over 50,000 — and politically the country has effectively left the race. Globally the IEA counted about 2 million fast charging points in the narrow sense at the end of 2024, with ultra-fast units up more than 50%.
China's pace is also the product of central planning. A government notice from June 2025 targets more than 100,000 high-power chargers of at least 250 kW per connector by the end of 2027, at least 98% availability and connected to state monitoring platforms, with grids pre-built and connections made cheaper and faster. An October 2025 action plan aims to double public charging capacity to more than 300 GW by the end of 2027.
Manufacturers are pushing the hardware further. BYD announced up to 1000 kW in March 2025, followed with a 1.5-megawatt charger in March 2026, and intends to pair high-power chargers with buffer storage to spare the local grid. The matching car, the Atto 8, is supposed to go from 10% to 70% in five minutes on the Flash system; BYD does not state the vehicle's maximum charging power. Dealers should sell it in Europe from the first quarter of 2027, and BYD wants 3,000 Flash stations there by spring 2027 — without naming locations yet.
Europe relies on minimum requirements instead: along the TEN-T core network, since the end of 2025 there must be a charging park with at least 400 kW total output and at least one 150 kW point every 60 km in each direction, rising to 600 kW by the end of 2027.
Growth numbers do not tell you whether a network works. Cross-country comparable data on utilisation, kilowatt-hours delivered per point or successful sessions is not in the IEA's survey, and a raw availability figure misleads: a connector can count as "online" while drivers cannot charge because of a payment failure. California therefore requires at least 97% uptime for subsidised fast chargers and counts payment-system outages as full downtime. In the EU, operators have had to publish live status, availability and ad-hoc prices since April 2025 under the AFIR regulation.
Commercially, Western Europe faces consolidation regardless: Roland Berger's EV Charging Index 2026 puts 45 battery-electric cars per fast charging point there, against a medium-term viable ratio of more than 100. If Chinese hardware and platforms push harder into the market, price pressure will rise — and the questions for operators and municipalities become procurement questions: who runs the backend and the app, where payment and location data are processed, and who controls software updates.
