Based on panel data of 37 cities in China from 2010 to 2020, this paper firstly quantifies the effect of charging infrastructure on the promotion of new energy vehicles. The study finds that the improvement of charging infrastructure significantly increases the sales of new energy vehicles in China. For the consideration of reverse causality, this paper takes the land area of urban commercial service facilities as the instrumental variable of public charging points, and the completed area of urban residential buildings as the instrumental variable of private charging points. The above findings still hold. In densely populated and congested large cities, improving charging technology to shorten charging time is more helpful to stimulate new energy vehicle consumption, especially pure electric vehicles, than simply increasing the number of charging posts. Improved availability of charging infrastructure, increased visibility and shorter charging time can significantly increase the sales of new energy vehicles.