The announcement was made by China's Finance Ministry, which said that the new scheme would take effect in 2015 once the current scheme ends ‘to preserve policy continuity’.

The measures have been put into place to help put the brakes on the country’s pollution problem.

The current scheme offers subsidies of up to 60,000 yuan (€7,241) for an all-electric battery car and up to 35,000 yuan (€4,224) for a "near all-electric" plug-in vehicle. The plan is to have half a million new-energy vehicles, covering all-electric battery vehicles and heavily electrified "near all-electric" plug-in hybrids, on the road by 2015 and five million by 2020.