The 61 models with engines of 1.6 liters or less consist of 27 models from four private companies including Chery and Dongfeng, and 34 models from eight joint ventures including Beijing Benz Automotive and Shanghai GM.

Buyers of the models will get a subsidy of 3,000 yuan ($443.37) per unit.

"The subsidy is not a decisive or important factor to demand. A slight jump might be seen in the models' sales this month, but not likely to be too much," Chen Zheng, auto analyst with China Securities, told the Global Times.

Chen said since the purchase tax reduction policy on small vehicles expires next year, the green car subsidy program will lose its effect.

The government halved the purchase tax levied on small vehicles to 5 percent in 2009. Boosted by the policy, small vehicles accounted for 70 percent of vehicles sales growth in 2009.

However, when the tax was lifted to 7.5 percent for small vehicles since last December, sales growth momentum of small vehicles began to fade. The ratio of small vehicles compared to overall passenger vehicles dropped below last year's average for a fifth straight month starting in March.

Du Fangci, assistant secretary general of the China Association of Auto Manufacturers, said the subsidy program should be applauded considering environmental pressures, but the huge gap between the rich and the poor and a lack of environmental awareness have stunted some of the policies' effects.

Though China outperformed Japan to become the world's second-largest economy in the second quarter, the country's GDP per capita lags far behind developed nations.

"Right now the people most likely to buy small cars, farmers and low-income city residents, can't afford them. And second car buyers prefer to buy SUVs and other high performance vehicles instead of fuel-efficient ones," said Du.

China plans to spend at least 12 billion yuan ($1.76 billion) to subsidize small and fuel-efficient vehicles by 2012, covering 4 million vehicles.