The Shanghai government has also more than tripled its subsidy for automakers from 300 yuan to 1,000 yuan for each battery they reclaim.

The moves came after Shanghai Mayor Yang Xiong promised Tesla CEO Elon Musk in April that his government would offer 3,000 free license plates each year to imported pure electric vehicles.

License plates for gasoline vehicles in Shanghai are auctioned with prices reaching to 70,000 yuan last month.

The government in Wuhan, Hubei province is offering more incentives to stimulate its interest among city residents in new-energy vehicles.

In addition to a subsidy of 57,000 yuan, electric vehicles, hybrids and fuel cell vehicles are exempt of traffic tolls and the last-digit rule that restricts driving days, according to the city's trial measures released on May 19.

"This is the most favorable policy nationwide," an official at the Wuhan bureau of science and technology told Chutian Golden News.

The city government has made it a policy that new-energy vehicles must account for at least 50 percent of government procurement and those deployed in public services.

It also plans to build 1,280 charging poles across the city, with 1,050 to be completed this year.

The Wuhan government has set a goal of having 10,500 new-energy vehicles by the end of 2015. So far it has purchased 1,141, most of them buses, according to the report.

To realize the goal, the Wuhan government is expected to spend 1.68 billion yuan in subsidies and infrastructure, it added.