📋 Article outline
In the last week of August 2026, ahead of the investment cooperation signing ceremony, working teams from CD Restop and DTH Holdings carried out a joint field survey along the Ho Chi Minh City – Da Lat corridor. The purpose was not ceremonial. Every investment parameter for the electrical infrastructure of the rest-stop network — substation capacity, chargers per site, load coincidence factors, expected energy sales — is only trustworthy once it has been checked against the ground. What traffic arrives at what hour, how long vehicles actually stay, what travellers do during that time, and most importantly: what they need that is not yet there.
This article records the two clearest conclusions from the trip. Both are gaps, and neither can be solved on its own: charging for the vehicle and sleep for the driver.
The picture on the road: one stop every 75 km, but only five with power
Rest-stop infrastructure on Vietnam's expressways has changed fast over the past two years. In 2023 – 2024, several newly opened expressway sections had no rest stops at all; drivers had to exit onto parallel national highways to find one. By the National Day holiday on 2 September 2026, the North – South Eastern Expressway had 27 rest stops in operation, averaging roughly one every 75 km. The Vietnam Road Administration is targeting completion of all 36 stops along the route within 2026.
That is real progress. But once the service layer inside that number is unpacked, the picture changes: only 11 stops have fuel stations, and only 5 have EV charging.
| Rest stops with EV charging infrastructure (as of September 2026) | Region |
|---|---|
| Cao Bo – Mai Son | North |
| Mai Son – National Highway 45 | North |
| Ham Nghi – Vung Ang | North Central |
| Vung Ang – Bung | North Central |
| Vinh Hao – Phan Thiet (Km205) | South Central |
Five out of twenty-seven. Along the entire arterial corridor running the length of the country, an electric vehicle has exactly five official energy points located inside a rest-stop compound. The stop at Km47+500 on the Dau Giay – Phan Thiet section — the first gateway for every journey out of Ho Chi Minh City toward the eastern provinces and the Central Highlands — currently offers only essential services, has no fuel station, and is not among the five listed above.
The team's main survey point was the rest stop at Km205+092 on the Vinh Hao – Phan Thiet expressway, inaugurated on 11 August 2026. It is one of the few already operating in a configuration close to the future standard: more than 13 hectares split across both sides of the carriageway, a solar canopy of nearly 2,500 m², high-capacity EV charging, and a large landscaped green area. For CD Restop, the value of this site is not its scale but its proof of one point: a solar-integrated parking canopy is viable at genuine commercial scale, not only on a drawing.
Gap one: power for the vehicle
Vietnam's EV fleet has passed the threshold at which infrastructure can no longer follow behind. As of the end of May 2026, the country had 374,816 electric vehicles: 369,849 passenger cars, 3,396 electric trucks and 1,571 electric buses. The share of new-energy vehicles among newly registered traffic accounts rose from 0.2% in 2022 to 28.9% in the first half of 2026 — and to 57.56% for passenger cars and leisure vehicles specifically.
That last figure matters most to an expressway rest-stop network. More than half of newly registered passenger vehicles are already new-energy vehicles. This is precisely the segment that drives long distances at weekends, on public holidays, and on self-drive trips — the core customer of every rest stop.
On the supply side, Vietnam has developed more than 150,000 public charging points. But the headline number hides two distribution characteristics that determine the actual experience: most charging points sit in cities and residential areas — where the behaviour is slow overnight charging — and a very large share belongs to a single brand's ecosystem. Along inter-provincial corridors the density thins out noticeably, and interoperability between networks remains unresolved.
Highway charging is a fundamentally different engineering problem from urban charging
The difference does not lie in the charger. It lies behind the charger.
- Instantaneous power, not energy volume. An urban charging point serves ten cars overnight on low-power alternating current. A highway point must serve ten cars within the same forty minutes on high-power direct current. Same daily energy, but peak power differs by a large multiple.
- Very high coincidence factor. In a city, vehicles arrive dispersed. On an expressway they arrive in waves — after every four hours of driving, after every holiday peak. Sizing the supply to the average fails on exactly the day it matters most.
- Local grid capacity is usually absent. Rest stops sit in sparsely populated areas, far from load centres. Connection must be made at medium voltage, with a dedicated cable run and a dedicated substation at each site. This is what consumes most of the delivery schedule — not installing the charger.
- Peak-hour cost. The hours with the most stopping traffic usually coincide with the most expensive tariff windows. Without on-site solar and storage to shift load, operations remain awkward even with good traffic.
That is why four chargers at a rest stop are not four devices but one system: substation – canopy solar – storage – chargers – dispatch software. Remove any link and everything else runs below its rated output.
What this means for users: the queue, not the range
In conversations about electric vehicles, the barrier is usually named as range anxiety. In the field, the barrier has moved. Battery capacity on today's mainstream models covers Ho Chi Minh City – Phan Thiet or Ho Chi Minh City – Da Lat without a mid-journey charge under normal conditions. What makes people hesitate is no longer the distance, but not knowing how long they will have to wait when they arrive.
The service-capacity arithmetic is simple, and unforgiving:
| Type of service bay | Time per vehicle | Vehicles/hour/bay | A four-bay site serves |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fuel pump | ~5 minutes | ~12 | ~48 vehicles/hour |
| DC fast-charging gun | 25 – 40 minutes | ~2 | ~8 vehicles/hour |
In other words, to match the throughput of a four-pump filling station, a charging site needs roughly six times as many bays. This multiplier is rarely factored in at the site-planning stage, and it explains why a few chargers retrofitted onto an existing rest stop still produce holiday queues even though, on paper, "the stop has charging".
The compounding effect on a journey: arrive when all four guns are busy with two cars ahead of you, and the real cost is roughly half an hour of waiting plus half an hour of charging. One hour stopped, at an operating speed of 90 km/h, is equivalent to nearly 90 km of road — on the Ho Chi Minh City – Da Lat route, that lengthens the trip by close to a quarter. In a petrol car, the same energy takes five minutes.
But what damages the experience most is not the length of the wait — it is its unpredictability. A petrol driver knows it will take five minutes, at any station on the route. An EV driver, on a corridor with only five official charging points inside rest stops, has no way of knowing whether the site ahead has a free bay, or how far the next one is if it does not. Trip planning therefore has to absorb a contingency that the driver cannot even size.
This is the real bottleneck in Vietnam's EV transition today, and it is psychological more than technical. Many households buy an electric car as the urban vehicle — where charging happens overnight at home and nobody queues — yet keep a petrol car for long trips, precisely because of the fear of queuing mid-route. Put differently: charging infrastructure along inter-provincial corridors does not merely serve the EVs already on the road; it is the variable that governs how fast the EV fleet grows. As long as the long-distance leg remains uncertain territory, the transition stays throttled at the final layer — the purchase decision.
Four design principles follow, and the rest-stop network has to observe all of them:
- The number of guns matters as much as the power of each. Raising a charger from 80 kW to 160 kW shortens each session, but only adding guns shortens the queue. One caveat compounds this: when two guns on the same unit share power, session time rises exactly when demand is highest.
- Site density matters more than the size of any one site. Many smaller points spread along the route cut queues better than concentrating everything into a few large ones — which is why CD Restop's network model includes affiliated points alongside major rest stops.
- Real-time information turns an open-ended wait into a known one. Whether a bay is free or busy, how long the running session has left, the ability to join a queue remotely — these are functions of the operating software layer, not of the hardware. A charging point without that layer generates anxiety even when bays are in fact available.
- Perceived waiting time shortens when there is something to do. Thirty minutes inside a full service area is not the same as thirty minutes sitting in the car on an empty apron. That principle leads straight into the second gap.
The deadline is now written into regulation: 1 January 2027
National technical regulation QCVN 43:2024/BGTVT on road rest stops has moved charging infrastructure from optional to mandatory:
| Item | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Share of charging-capable bays | At least 10% of all parking bays must be designated for EV charging |
| Additional required infrastructure | Areas for chargers and charging equipment; a transformer substation; backup power supply |
| Minimum bay area | 40 m² for buses and trucks; 25 m² for cars; each bay marked with painted lines |
| Deadline for existing stops | Charging systems must be completed before 1 January 2027 |
The road authority additionally recommends that investors survey real demand and provide more than the 10% minimum. Read that table as a planner would: the distance from today to the deadline is shorter than the typical investment cycle of a medium-voltage substation plus grid connection procedures. In other words, the decision has to be made this year, not next.
Gap two: sleep for the driver
This gap gets less attention, yet during the survey it stood out even more sharply than the charging gap.
The legal framework has shifted in a way few have noticed. Article 64 of the 2024 Law on Road Traffic Order and Safety originally set three limits for commercial and internal transport drivers: no more than 10 hours per day, no more than 48 hours per week, and no more than 4 hours of continuous driving. Law No. 118/2025/QH15 — effective from 1 July 2026 — removed the first two; working hours revert to the Labour Code. What remains, in full force, is the ban on driving continuously for more than 4 hours, after which a rest of at least 15 minutes is required for fixed-route coaches, contract vehicles, tour buses and freight vehicles.
Removing the daily and weekly ceilings does not reduce the driver's need for rest. It shifts the burden: from administrative penalty to the transport operator's own labour organisation — and to the infrastructure along the route. With hard daily limits gone, the quality of each stop becomes the deciding factor in whether a driver actually recovers or merely pauses for the record.
Four hours of continuous driving at operating speeds of 80 – 100 km/h equals 320 – 400 km. One stop every 75 km is, on paper, more than enough. But the field survey showed how far apart a rest stop and a place where one can actually sleep still are:
| What a long-haul driver needs | Typical situation at rest stops today |
|---|---|
| Clean toilets, drinking water | Present at almost all stops — mandatory essential public service works |
| Hot food outside office hours | Available at some stops; many close their services late in the evening |
| Fuel / energy | 11 of 27 stops have fuel; 5 of 27 have EV charging |
| A 30 – 90 minute nap in a dark, quiet, air-conditioned space | Almost entirely absent — drivers sleep in the cab, seat reclined, engine idling for air conditioning |
| A shower after a long shift | Very rare |
| Safe, well-lit, monitored parking while sleeping | Uneven across stops |
The consequence of this missing final service layer is not comfort but safety. A drowsy driver either stops where the road was not designed for stopping — the emergency lane, the shoulder, an unlit area — or keeps driving. Both choices create risk for that driver and for everyone around them. A 30 – 90 minute nap, taken in a place designed for it, is a road-safety infrastructure item, not a luxury amenity.
For trucks and long-distance coaches there is one more layer: the fuel burned idling the engine to run air conditioning throughout a cab sleep, and the emissions that follow. A grid-powered sleeping cabin at the stop directly replaces that idling fuel — one of the few items that simultaneously improves working conditions, cuts operating cost and reduces emissions.
Why the two gaps must be solved together
This is the central conclusion of the survey, and the basis of the welfare rest-stop model CD Restop pursues.
Electric vehicles create mandatory dwell time. Filling a fuel tank takes five minutes; a meaningful fast-charging session takes 25 – 40 minutes. For a petrol station, customer dwell time is a cost to minimise. For a charging point it is an unavoidable technical condition — and therefore an asset, provided the site offers something to do during it. The economics of a roadside stop invert completely as vehicles shift from combustion to electric.
Conversely, short-stay accommodation creates night-time load and traffic. A site with chargers alone concentrates its revenue into a handful of weekend and holiday peaks, leaving expensive equipment idle the rest of the time. Add sleeping cabins, late-opening food and night services, and traffic spreads across the hours; charger utilisation outside peaks rises; and the electricity consumed at night — when tariffs are lower and storage has been filled by daytime solar — carries a far better cost structure than peak-hour consumption.
Put simply: the sleeping facility makes the charging facility financially viable, and the charging facility gives the sleeping facility its traffic. Separated, both are weak. Placed within the same walking radius, on the same power system and under the same operating software, they compensate for each other.
That is the definition of a welfare rest stop: not a charging station with a restaurant attached, nor a motel with a charger added, but a facility serving the full needs of both person and vehicle in a single stop — rest, food, sanitation, sleep, energy, and in many cases the welfare needs of the surrounding community as well.
DTH Holdings' role in the solution
The survey took place during preparations for the investment cooperation signing ceremony between CD Restop and DTH Holdings, scheduled for 9 September 2026 in Ho Chi Minh City.
DTH Holdings is an investment holding group operating on three pillars — renewable energy, artificial intelligence and Industrial IoT — with a track record of delivering rooftop solar projects across the country. In the cooperation with CD Restop, its scope sits exactly at the infrastructure layer the analysis above identifies as the real bottleneck:
- On-site electrical infrastructure — a dedicated substation per site, canopy solar over the parking area, storage, and high-capacity chargers.
- The EMS/OMS platform — real-time energy monitoring across the solar – storage – load chain, charging session management, fault alerts and output reporting. This is the layer that turns a collection of separate devices into an operable network.
- Technical transfer and training — under a principle both parties agreed, operating technicians must be trained and certified before installation begins at the first sites, to ensure electrical safety, preserve equipment warranties and standardise maintenance procedures.
This structure sits inside the wider ecosystem framework: SPT Corporation with the Scharge charger system and land bank, CD Restop developing and operating the site network, DTH Holdings covering electrical infrastructure and the management platform, alongside the solar and storage portfolio agreed in principle with Coro Energy. Roles divided by core competence, rather than one company building all four industries itself — the architectural choice CD Restop set out in its earlier analysis of the charging-infrastructure alliance.
Network configuration and immediate steps
The network is designed around two site groups with different electrical configurations:
| Group | Site type | Electrical configuration and amenities |
|---|---|---|
| I | Major rest stops | Large dedicated substation; 4 chargers per site; full welfare amenities to the CD Restop standard set |
| II | Affiliated points | Smaller substation; 2 chargers per site; reduced amenities for fast replication in later phases |
Standardising into two configuration groups allows investment volume and equipment terms to be calculated at network level, then adjusted to each location's field survey and grid connection conditions; actual rollout follows a phased plan. The land portfolio serving the network currently comprises 17 locations totalling more than 26,800 m² across five provinces and cities, and continues to expand. The first three sites in Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang have been surveyed and their existing conditions designed by the technical team; a pilot site in Ho Chi Minh City is being prepared to trial the full equipment and software chain before replication.
Why the Ho Chi Minh City – Da Lat corridor was chosen
The route was not chosen at random. The axis connecting Ho Chi Minh City to Da Lat is being upgraded to expressway along almost its entire length: Dau Giay – Lien Khuong runs roughly 220 km at four lanes, comprising Dau Giay – Tan Phu (60 km, construction started August 2025), Tan Phu – Bao Loc (67 km), Bao Loc – Lien Khuong (74 km) and Lien Khuong – Prenn (19 km). As these sections open in turn, travel time between Ho Chi Minh City and Da Lat will shorten substantially, and self-drive tourism volume on the axis will rise with it.
Combine that with the 57.56% new-energy share among newly registered passenger and leisure vehicles, and the conclusion is straightforward: a very large proportion of traffic on this corridor over the coming years will need to recharge mid-journey rather than refuel.
The lesson from 2023 – 2024 is a lesson about sequence. When southern expressway sections opened without rest stops, the cost did not fall on the infrastructure investor — it fell on road users, in the form of journeys that had to leave the expressway to find somewhere to stop. Rest-stop and charging infrastructure must be in place at the same time a route opens, not several years later. That is why CD Restop is surveying and securing land along this corridor before the expressway sections are completed.
What we took away
Three things stayed with us after the trip.
One, the expressway charging gap is not a future problem but one already due: 5 of 27 stops have charging, while more than half of newly registered passenger vehicles are new-energy, and the regulation sets completion before 1 January 2027. More to the point: this gap is not merely inconvenient, it is slowing the transition itself — the fear of queuing for a charge mid-route is why many buyers take an EV for the city yet keep a petrol car for long trips.
Two, the gap in genuine rest facilities for drivers is larger than the charging gap, and far less measured. After the daily and weekly driving ceilings were removed on 1 July 2026, the 4-hour continuous driving limit remains intact — and the quality of each stop matters more than before.
Three, these two gaps should not be addressed by two different kinds of facility. The mandatory charging time of an electric vehicle is exactly the time available to rest, eat and sleep; and conversely, rest-food-sleep services are what give charging infrastructure the utilisation it needs to stand financially. That is the entire argument for the welfare rest-stop model.
Contact
Landowners, site investors and companies interested in developing rest stops along expressway corridors can write to hi@cdrestop.com. CD Restop surveys the site, assesses grid connection conditions and actual traffic, then proposes a configuration suited to that location — because, as this trip confirmed once again, no two sites are alike.