Angela Merkel reaffirms the goal of one million electric cars in Germany by 2020

German Chancellor Angela Merkel reaffirmed the goal of 1 million electric cars running on German roads by 2020, the media reported.

[caption id=“attachment_3791541” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. AFP[/caption] “I have not pulled it back. I said that we have to do more, otherwise, we would not be able to make it,” Merkel said on Wednesday. Merkel said in May that “as it looks at the moment, we will not achieve that goal,” a statement interpreted as a sign that the chancellor had already given up the goal, Xinhua news agency reported. In addition to her reaffirmation, Merkel also called for an **expansion of the infrastructure for electric cars** , such an increase in loading sites and more charging stations in car parking houses and streets. The spokesman of German federal government Steffen Seibert reacted later to Merkel’s statement, saying that a very rapid rise in the number is possible in the field of new technologies. At the moment, less than 100,000 electric cars are running on German roads. Earlier, while Germany’s automakers were ramping up production of electric cars, **most batteries they were using were made in Asia** , prompting fears that Germany could lose its leadership in the core car technology of the future. In May, Merkel came under fire when she admitted Germany was likely to miss the government’s target of bringing 1 million electric cars onto the roads by the end of the decade.