German emissions target

German chancellor Angela Merkel summoned car bosses to Berlin this week to discuss ways to increase sales of low emissions electric and hybrid cars in the wake of Volkswagen’s pollution cheating scandal.

Political pressure to do more to promote low-polluting cars has increased since September when Volkswagen admitted that it had rigged diesel emissions tests in the United States using cheat software.

German automakers have for years relied on a recipe of selling larger, more powerful cars to please autobahn cruising clients and to juice the profits of its premium carmakers Daimler, BMW, and Audi.

As a result, Chinese and Japanese rivals including BYD and Toyota have stolen the march on German carmakers in terms of sales of zero-emission vehicles.

BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi now rank 12th, 14th, and 22nd respectively in terms of global sales of hybrid and electric vehicles, data from LMC Automotive shows.

Germany is also set to fall far short of its goal to put one million electric cars on the roads by 2020, as drivers are reluctant to switch from more-polluting, but also generally cheaper, diesel and petrol vehicles.

So far only around 50,000 electric and hybrid cars have been registered in Germany, Europe’s biggest car market.