China's production of new-energy vehicles surged by 280 percent year on year in the first seven months thanks to government support for the fledgling sector.
Total production in the January-July period stood at 25,946 units, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said in a statement.
During the period, output of pure electric passenger cars soared nearly 700 percent from a year earlier to 13,829 units and that for plug-in hybrid passenger cars climbed about 10 times to 5,027 units.
Pure electric and plug-in hybrid commercial vehicles were up by 46 percent and 60 percent, respectively, yesterday’s statement said.
China has rolled out a raft of measures to promote the use of new-energy vehicles in its bid to save energy and combat pollution, including tax exemptions, subsidies for car purchases and requirement for government organs to buy more new-energy cars.
In July, the government announced that new-energy cars will be exempted from a 10 percent purchase tax starting from September 1, 2014, to the end of 2017.