SHIJIAZHUANG — Cities in northern China’s Hebei province saw robust growth in electric vehicle travel during the week-long Spring Festival holiday.

The State Grid Hebei Electric Power Co. Ltd. supplied 391,600 kWh of electricity for electric vehicles during the holiday in six cities including Shijiazhuang, Baoding and Hengshui, more than tenfold compared with the same period in 2017, the company announced on Feb 13.

A total of 37,563 new energy vehicles (NEV) were introduced in Hebei last year, including private cars, buses and taxis, data from Hebei’s industry and information technology department showed.

As of December 2018, the province had more than 80,000 blade electric vehicles.

As a Spring Festival tradition, Chinese people head back home to reunite with their families, which led to an annual travel rush between Jan 21 to March 1 this year.

Thanks to the government’s preferential policies to boost clean energy use to curb pollution, China has become one of the fastest-growing NEV markets.

According to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, although China’s auto sales dropped in 2018, the sales of NEVs soared by 61.74 percent year-on-year to 1.26 million units.