ELECTRIC car buyers in Shanghai's Jiading District will get further subsidies when they charge their vehicles on top of grants already provided by the city government.

Shanghai's Jiading District will provide subsidies for electric car charging as a sweetener for private buyers already subsidized by the municipal government, district officials said yesterday.

Until 2014, a total of 350 green car owners living or working in the district will each receive a subsidy of 15,000 yuan (US$2,446) for their electricity fees and expenses for charging. They already received incentives of 40,000 yuan to buy purely electric vehicles and 30,000 yuan for plug-in hybrids offered by the city government.

In order to get the subsidies electric car owners need to plug their cars into a system that collects data on green car usage which will be used to study user habits. The latest data compiled by the district showed up to 80 percent of electric car owners drive under 60 kilometers a day - within the car's maximum mileage on a single charge.

By the end of March, there were 39,800 electric cars running on roads in China, a significant rise from 27,400 units last year, following continued efforts to make the cars more reliable and affordable.

Over the past three years, the capacity of vehicle batteries and the lifespan of electric cars have doubled at the global level while their prices plunged 50 percent, Wan Gang, China's minister of technology said at the 2013 International Forum on Electric Vehicle Pilot Cities and Industrial Development held yesterday in the district.

Wan said a new policy offering the same amount of central-level subsidies for electric cars will be implemented soon.