Pion production in high energy heavy-ion collisions is studied in the hydrochemical model in which chemical reactions are explicitly considered in the expansion stage of the hadronic phase. We find that chemical equilibrium is not established among the hadronic particles, This results in a large value for pion chemical potential at the thermal freeze out, leading to an enhanced production of low energy pions. By introducing the notion of electrical chemical potential to account for the charge conservation, we further find that the excess of low energy π^+ is less that that of π^-. We also find a plateau-like structure in the incident energy dependence of the pion multiplicity as a result of the formation of the quark-hadron mixed phase in the initial stage of the collision.