Most people in China now live closer to a public EV charger than to a petrol station, according to a nationwide study of 337 cities. However, the same research finds that charging access is far less equal, and the most remote households can face a drive of more than 100 km to plug in.
What did the researchers find?
Researchers from Guangxi University, Tsinghua University and other Chinese institutions, working with Johns Hopkins University, published the findings on 21 October 2026 in Communications Sustainability, a Nature Portfolio journal. The team mapped 1.35 million buildings against about 260,000 charging stations and 110,000 petrol stations. For each building, it then measured the real driving distance to the nearest charger and the nearest pump.
The headline result favours drivers. Nationally, 68.4 per cent of people live within 1.5 km of a public charging station. By comparison, only 46.1 per cent live that close to a petrol station. The median resident is about 1.0 km from a charger and 1.6 km from a pump.
China’s EV chargers also outnumber petrol stations per head. The authors count 1.73 charging stations per 10,000 people, against 0.77 petrol stations. In addition, each charging station serves around 83 electric cars, while each petrol station serves roughly 2,518 petrol vehicles.
Why do the averages hide a problem?
At the edges, however, the picture changes sharply. For the most remote 0.01 per cent of the population, the nearest charger lies more than 108 km away. The equivalent figure for petrol is about 72 km. In Northeast China, that furthest group faces a drive of more than 114 km to plug in. Northwest and North China follow at 88 km and 87 km.
To compare the two networks, the team uses the Gini coefficient, a common inequality score. A score of 0 means everyone has equal access, while 1 means total inequality. Nationally, charging scores 0.578 and petrol scores 0.431. Regional charging scores range from 0.438 in Central South China to 0.699 in the Northeast. Petrol stays steadier, between 0.321 and 0.461.
Residential areas show the widest gap. These neighbourhoods house 74.1 per cent of the people in the study. Yet their charging score reaches 0.590, compared with 0.436 for petrol. The authors suggest chargers cluster in selected housing estates and leave many ordinary neighbourhoods behind.
Why are chargers bunching up in big cities?
Part of the answer lies in who builds them. The study shows charging supply grows faster than population as cities get larger. Petrol stations, by contrast, grow more slowly than population, which the authors see as a sign of a mature network.
Operator type plays a part too. State-owned grid companies spread their stations more widely, possibly because planning mandates favour broad coverage. Meanwhile, third-party firms and carmakers’ own networks lean harder towards crowded urban districts. Those include the networks run by Tesla, BYD and NIO, which also operates battery swap stations. The authors link this pattern to a profit-driven focus on dense areas.
Local factors shape the gap as well. Cities with heavier air pollution and more granted patents tend to spread chargers more evenly. In contrast, bigger local public budgets go hand in hand with greater concentration in cities that are already unequal.
What are the study’s limits?
The researchers gathered station locations from the AMap mapping service in March 2025. They measure distance only, so the results say nothing about charger speed, queues or reliability. Charging also takes longer than filling a tank, so drivers need more nearby options. Even so, the same pattern holds when the team checks the second to fifth nearest stations.
Home charging sits outside the analysis. Still, the authors warn of a “double disadvantage”. People in older flats or dense estates often can’t install a home charger. As a result, the households most reliant on public plugs may also live furthest from them. Taxi, ride-hailing and delivery fleets face similar pressure because of their high daily mileage.
What should planners do next?
The authors argue that charger targets alone fall short. They call for planning that weighs fairness alongside raw numbers, with stronger public co-ordination to steer stations towards underserved regions. They also see a bigger role for state grid operators in rural and peri-urban areas.
In their view, a single national formula won’t work. Cities with the worst gaps need tailored subsidies, land-use support and grid investment. The authors also point to the petrol network as a benchmark, since it took decades of co-ordination to reach its current balance.
For drivers in Beijing or Shanghai, a charger is probably closer than ever. In rural Northeast China, though, the nearest one can still be more than 100 km away. The full paper is free to read on Nature’s website.
