China to spur development of new-energy cars

China's State Council, or the cabinet, said on Wednesday that the country will move faster to develop its energy-saving and new-energy vehicle industry to ease pressure on resources and the environment.

Prioritizing purely electricity-driven vehicles will be the major strategic route for China to transform the automobile industry. And the current focus is to promote the industrialization of pure electric cars and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, said a statement released after a State Council executive meeting presided over by Premier Wen Jiabao.

It is hoped that China's accumulative output of pure electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles will be 500,000 by 2015 and 5 million by 2020, it said.

The country will try to lower average fuel consumption of automobiles produced in 2015 to 0.069 liters per km and those produced in 2020 will see average consumption drop to 0.05 liters per km, according to the statement.