(Photo/Xinhua)

"New energy vehicles (NEVs) improved China's international influence in the auto industry," said Xu Yanhua, deputy secretary-general of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM).

Xu made the remarks at an auto summit held in Changchun, northeast China's Jilin province on Wednesday.

China is the world's largest NEV market. It produced and sold 614,000 and 617,000 NEVs in the first six months this year, up 48.5 percent and 49.6 percent from last year, respectively.

Xu said that China was a latecomer in the NEV industry, but has gradually caught up.

"The US was the first country to cross the 10,000 and 100,000 marks of NEV ownership, and China is the first to cross the 500,000 and 1 million marks," Xu noted.

According to Xu, China has the most charging facilities in the world. He added that the country had built a total of 1 million charging facilities nationwide by June this year.

"Power battery is core to the development of NEVs, and China is home to two of the top five largest power battery producers," Xu said.

By 2025, it is expected that around 8 percent of China's vehicles will be powered by new energy, rising to 40 percent by 2035.

Cui Shudong, secretary-general of the China Passenger Car Association, believes that despite the country's whole vehicle market hitting a low last year, NEVs will expand the development space of China's auto industry.

With the popularization of electric cars and the optimization of battery technologies, the user cost of electric vehicles will be largely reduced, Cui said.

China's automotive industry still has a considerable gap when compared with global automotive powers, but Xu holds that the country has the opportunity to become a major player as cars become electrified, smart, connected and shared.