Chinese carmakers 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, recent data showed.

They made a total of 5,191 of the green vehicles in August, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technologysaid 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, including tax exemptions, subsidies for car purchases and requirements for government bodies to buy the cars.

In July, the government announced that new-energy cars will be exempted from a 10-percent purchase tax from September 1 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 auto industry produced 13.3 million vehicles, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

Xinhua - Global Times