BEIJING - China's production of new energy vehicles surged by 280 percent year on year in the first seven months thanks to government support for the fledgling sector.

Total production in the January-July period stood at 25,946 units, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said Sunday in a statement.

During the period, output of pure electric passenger cars soared nearly 700 percent from a year earlier to 13,829 units and that for plug-in hybrid passenger cars climbed about 10 times to 5,027 units.

Pure electric and plug-in hybrid commercial vehicles were up by 46 percent and 60 percent, respectively, the statement said.

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

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