Berlin 'abandons one million electric cars goal'

"The hype is over," the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung wrote, citing information from the Ministry of Education and Research. The high expectations for electric cars, which have no carbon dioxide emissions, has been replaced by huge disappointment, the paper wrote.

Environment Minister Peter Altmaier admitted that there are problems with electric cars and Economy Minister Philipp Rösler has refused to encourage electric car sales with economic incentives.

Chancellor Angela Merkel will meet with auto industry leaders on Monday for a summit on electric mobility. The government has become less enthusiastic about electric cars, unnamed government sources said.

The automobile industry has said that without additional government subsidies they can only sell 600,000 electric cars by 2020 at best.

The government has countered those demands by abandoning its one million electric cars on the road by 2020 goal, the paper wrote, adding that the semi-official government line is now effectively "What’s so bad when electric mobility isn’t achieved so quickly?"

Education and Research Minister Annette Schavan said a lot more time is needed – especially to produce improvements in the electric batteries.