Beijing : Beijing has set up more than 112,600 electric vehicle charging points, according to official figures.

The Chinese capital has also launched a smartphone app so that drivers of electric or hybrid cars can locate the nearest charging points, reports Efe news.

The charging stations are an increasingly common sight on the streets of Beijing, although they are frequently occupied by conventional vehicles due to lack of parking spaces.

Beijing also has more and more electric municipal vehicles, from urban transport buses to garbage trucks.

One of the targets in the 13th five-year plan (2016-2020) is to create a national charging point network for a fleet of 5 million electric vehicles.

China is to require that 10 per cent of the vehicles manufacturers sell on the domestic market be electric or hybrid from 2019, a figure that will increase to 12 per cent by 2020. The number is set to be revised in 2021.

The government said in September that it was proposing a ban on the sale of vehicles powered by fossil fuels in future, although it did not specify a date.

In the first 11 months of the year, sales of electric and hybrid cars in China reached 609,000 units, 51.4 per cent more than in the same period in 2016, thanks to government subsidies for the purchase of cars equipped with these propulsion methods.

—IANS