China Builds 25,000 Electric Cars, Plug-In Hybrids In June

China continues to remain the world's largest market for cars, with recent statistics showing the countries success in producing environmentally-friendly vehicles.

Data from the Ministry of Industry published in the Beijing Daily shows that all of China's automakers have built a total of 25,000 electric cars and plug-in hybrids in June alone, according to news site Gasgoo.

Of the total number of vehicles, 17,163 were passenger cars (10,500 battery electric cars and 666,3 plug-in hybrids) and 7,863 were commercial cars (6,218 battery electric cars and 1,645 plug-in hybrids).

China refers to these cars as "New Energy Vehicles," which are aimed at helping the country keep the top spot in the plug-in electric vehicle market and reducing its hazardous air pollution, The Christian Science Monitor reported. The country has managed to build more new energy vehicles than both the U.S. and Japan in the past few months.

However, this total can't be directly compared to total electric and hybrid sales reported by Green Reports and other publications.

Sales data from North America, for both the U.S. and Canada, focuses only on highway-capable vehicles meeting all Federal motor vehicle safety standards, while China's data included cars that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would consider neighborhood EVs. These vehicles often came with top speeds of at least 35 mph and only had brakes, lights, wipers, seat belts, and maybe audio systems, The Christian Science Monitor reported.

China numbers from June represent one-third of the vehicles that the country produced in the first six months of 2015, which is 78,500.