As the government is urging electric vehicle production, China's public transportation will be the first to use eco-friendly green vehicles and electric buses will create a huge market for EV makers, Xinhua News reported today.

Besides high production costs, long charging time for batteries is an outstanding problem for the development of electric vehicles in China. It takes two to eight hours to recharge the battery of an electric vehicle.

"It's easier to recharge the batteries of electric buses as these vehicles have fixed routes", said Xu Changming, research director with the State Information Center. An e-bus can run 80km after each charging which takes four hours, the battery usually recharged twice a day.

The existing electric buses also use the battery swap system, by which a dead battery can be replaced within 8 minutes at an exchange station, said Zhang Jianping, president of Beijing e-bus Technology.

Currently, Beijing city has 50 electric buses in operation and plans to put another 250 green buses onto the road this year. E-buses will be widely used in public transportation, a huge market for EV makers.