Shanghai expects fully-electric cars to make up for more than half of auto sales by 2025, as the city works to build a green and smart transport system, local officials said at a press conference on Thursday.

Officials also pledged to step up the promotion of new energy vehicles (NEVs). More than 80 percent of buses and taxis in the city will be powered by renewable energy by 2025. They also set the goal of expanding the number of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles to 10,000 by that time.

China's NEV industry has benefited from the country's twin green goals of peaking carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060.

Cities across the country have launched favorable policies towards NEV sales and propped up infrastructure construction. Nationwide, China extended the purchase tax exemption for NEVs to the end of 2023 after introducing the scheme in 2014.

Shanghai plans to build 760,000 charging piles by 2025, so that there will be almost one charging station for every two electric cars. It also plans to install 70 hydrogen refueling stations covering key application areas.

Beijing also plans to promote NEV development. According to its latest five-year plan, the capital city aims to boost the number of new energy vehicles to two million by 2025.

Beijing Daily quoted an official from the local vehicle emission management center saying that the current number of NEVs in Beijing is about 560,000, and the electrification rate of vehicles should rise from the current six percent to 30 percent by 2025.

Data from the China Passenger Car Association showed this week that the proportion of NEVs in the sales of new vehicles nationwide hit 31.8 percent for September, up 11 percentage points year on year.

Being the largest NEV market in the world, the number of NEVs registered in China has hit 10.99 million by end-August, accounting for around half of the world's total, official data showed in September.