In the first half of the year, authorities in East China's Zhejiang province organized a province-wide automobile consumption tour, supported local car promotion activities, and implemented policies like car consumption vouchers, which yielded positive results.

From Jan to June this year, Zhejiang's total automotive sales reached 208.69 billion yuan ($29.02 billion), a 9.1 percent year-on-year increase, accounting for 36.4 percent of the total social retail sales of consumer goods and a 0.5 percentage point increase from the same period last year, contributing 1.2 percentage points to the overall social retail sales growth in the province.

The sales of new energy vehicles reached 63.21 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth of 51.7 percent. According to the latest data, Zhejiang saw 314,000 newly-insured new energy vehicles in the first half of the year, a 25.6 percent year-on-year increase and a penetration rate of 41.5 percent. Among these, there were 240,300 electric vehicles insured, a 15.2 percent year-on-year growth.

During the same period, the national sales of new energy vehicles were 3.086 million units, with a penetration rate of 32.4 percent, and Zhejiang's sales accounted for over 10 percent.

In the first half of this year, districts and counties in Hangzhou jointly organized 47 car promotion activities, resulting in a total retail amount of 67.3 billion yuan, accounting for 32.25 percent of the province's total. The retail amount increased by 17.9 percent, with new energy vehicles showing remarkable growth at 66.5 percent.