China producing more electric cars

BEIJING - Chinese car makers produced 11 times as many new energy vehicles in August 2014 as they did in August 2013, as the government rolled out more support for the sector, new data has showed.

They made a total of 5,191 of the green vehicles last month, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said in a statement.

For the first eight months of the year, total production more than quadrupled to 31,137 units.

New energy vehicles include pure electric cars and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

During the January-August period, output of pure electric passenger cars soared nearly 700 percent from a year earlier to 16,276 units and that for plug-in hybrid passenger cars climbed about 12 times to 6,621 units.

Output of pure electric and plug-in hybrid commercial vehicles went up by 55 percent and 91 percent, respectively, the statement said.

China has rolled out a raft of measures to encourage the use of new energy vehicles in its bid to save energy and combat pollution, including tax exemptions, subsidies for car purchases and requirements for government bodies to buy of the cars.

In July, the government announced that new energy cars will be exempted from a 10-percent purchase tax from Sept. 1, 2014 to the end of 2017.

However, new energy cars still account for only a tiny proportion of China's total auto output.

In the first seven months, the country's automotive industry produced 13.3 million vehicles, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.