BEIJING - China is to take measures to bolster the new energy vehicle (NEV) industry, including extending the preferential policy for NEV purchase tax, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said Tuesday.

The country will continue to pilot new NEV battery-changing models amid efforts to stabilize the industrial and supply chain, Luo Junjie, an official with the ministry, told a news conference.

China's NEV sector has ushered in a large-scale, high-speed development stage, said Luo. It is likely to sustain a rapid pace of expansion in 2022.

The official, however, pointed out that the industry also faces challenges such as the COVID-19 outbreaks, price hikes in raw materials, and auto chip shortages.

To help NEV manufacturers address these challenges, the ministry will formulate a roadmap for the low-carbon development of the auto industry, encourage the integration of auto electrification and intelligent technologies, and improve the safety and adaptation to low temperatures of NEV batteries, according to Luo.

It will also speed up the domestic exploitation of NEV-related resources and cooperate with other authorities in cracking down on hoarding and price gouging to bring raw material prices "back to a reasonable level", Luo added.

In the first three months of this year, the retail sales and output of NEVs in China amounted to about 1.26 million units and 1.29 million units, respectively, both seeing a 140 percent surge from a year earlier, data from the ministry showed.