JINAN, May 6 (Xinhua) -- At the Lingang Industrial Park in Juye County, east China's Shandong Province, ten 360-kilowatt charging piles stand in neat rows as new energy heavy-duty trucks pull in and out in a steady, orderly flow to recharge.
This ordinary-looking charging station marks a crucial step for the locality in tackling the high energy consumption and pollution problems associated with traditional fuel-powered heavy trucks.
Juye County is a logistics hub at the junction of four provinces, namely Shandong, Jiangsu, Anhui and Henan in eastern and central China. Lingang Industrial Park, spanning a planned area of 15 square kilometres, is home to more than 40 enterprises across key sectors, including new-type glass manufacturing, intelligent manufacturing, and modern commerce and logistics.
The bustling port and industrial park bring a constant flow of heavy trucks, making the exhaust emissions and noise from conventional fuel-powered vehicles increasingly at odds with local green development goals.
Wei Zhongzhao, logistics manager at Juye Tongfu Transportation Co., Ltd., has run the numbers. The fuel cost for a traditional heavy truck is about 2 yuan (about 29 U.S. cents) per kilometer, while the electricity cost for an electric counterpart is about 1 yuan. Based on an average annual mileage of 100,000 kilometers per truck, a single vehicle can save 100,000 yuan in fuel costs per year.
"But the prerequisite is having places to charge, and fast charging," he said.
To meet this pressing market demand, State Grid Juye County Electric Power Company dispatched technicians multiple times to accelerate the construction of the heavy truck charging station.
Since its launch, the station's single-day peak charging volume has exceeded 4,200 kilowatt-hours, with a single-gun peak reaching 525 kilowatt-hours. The facility can meet the daily charging needs of up to 200 heavy trucks.
"It now takes only 40 minutes for a full charge, earning me nearly 10,000 yuan more per month," Zhang Haishen, a truck driver, said.
The ultra-high charging power greatly boosts energy replenishment efficiency for heavy trucks, directly lowering costs and improving operational efficiency for logistics companies. Tongfu Transportation has expanded its fleet of electric heavy trucks from 6 to 13, registering a 15-percent average monthly rise in transport volume and a 10-percent drop in operating costs.
The rapid rollout of heavy-truck charging infrastructure in Juye is fuelling the green transformation of the local logistics sector, and spurring the clustering of upstream and downstream businesses including new energy vehicle sales, maintenance and leasing services.
By 2026, Juye will complete and put into operation eight heavy-truck charging stations. The local energy supply network will shift from "single-site coverage" to "multi-site layout," with stations connecting industrial parks and major transport arteries, gradually forming a heavy truck charging network system covering the county and radiating to surrounding areas.
Chen Guangxing, deputy general manager of State Grid Juye County Electric Power Company, said that the next step involves strengthening the layout of power grid infrastructure supporting charging facilities and promoting the application of new technologies like "integrated photovoltaic, storage and charging" to help Juye build a green logistics hub in southwestern Shandong.
In recent years, Shandong has seen rapid growth in electric heavy trucks, with the provincial fleet reaching 20,000 vehicles. In 2025 alone, 10,000 new vehicles were added, a year-on-year increase of 190 percent.
At present, however, Shandong has only 443 dedicated charging stations for electric heavy trucks. The layout of stations is insufficient and uneven, and there are no dedicated charging facilities on expressways yet, failing to fully meet the energy replenishment needs of electric heavy trucks.
From 2026 to 2027, Shandong plans to build 155 demonstration charging stations in expressway service areas and highways, forming a green energy replenishment corridor for electric heavy trucks covering 16 cities, with a total length of over 6,600 kilometers.
China's domestic new energy heavy truck market has seen explosive growth in recent years. China National Heavy Duty Truck Group (Sinotruk) continued the strong momentum of its 2025 new energy heavy truck sales. In the first quarter of 2026, its new energy heavy truck sales increased by 98.2 percent year on year.
As battery-powered electric vehicles become the mainstream of newly sold vehicles and new energy commercial heavy trucks gain large-scale adoption, China is expanding the use of new energy vehicles in urban public transport, taxis, postal services, urban distribution, ports, airports and other sectors, while promoting the wider deployment of new energy heavy-duty trucks.
According to a document on promoting the integrated development of transportation and energy, jointly issued by the Ministry of Transport and nine other departments, China aims to achieve comprehensive integration and interaction between transportation and the new energy system by 2035. ■
