(Yicai Global) March 21 -- Suzhou, an eastern China city close to the country's largest, Shanghai, has plans to develop its hydrogen energy industry and increase its worth to more than CNY10 billion (USD1.6 billion) by 2020, and quintuple that by 2025.

The city set a short-term goal of building 10 hydrogen refueling stations and putting 800 hydrogen-cell vehicles, including buses, delivery vans and sanitation trucks, into operation by 2020, new-energy vehicle portal D1EV reported, quoting the municipal government. Long-term plans include building 40 stations and running 10,000 vehicles within five more years.

A key city along the Yangtze River Delta, Suzhou's gross domestic product topped CNY1.7 trillion (USD269 billion) last year, ranking top among other cities in Jiangsu province and besting its capital Nanjing to rank seventh among all Chinese cities.

Suzhou will also gather innovative companies and talent from home and abroad to work at research and development labs, such as the Kunshan Innovation Institution of Nanjing University, as it looks to build up a hydrogen energy hub in the city, the report said. It hopes to involve Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing Co., Toyota Motor Corp.'s local unit, in the project.