Speaking to members of the National Platform for Electric Mobility today, she said Germany should be a market leader for the technology, claiming it should have one million electric vehicles on the roads by 2020, increasing to six million by 2030.

‘This will not be easy because there are many global competitors, especially in the Asian region,’ she said in her weekly podcast on Saturday. ‘But we believe that we can tie to the outstanding capabilities of our manufacturers in the automotive industry.’

Ms Merkel said German manufacturers had to overcome the challenge of catching up on ‘lost ground’ against others, and a charging infrastructure was needed to help it take off. She said the federal government was working with local authorities to help establish this.

‘Electric mobility is an opportunity to become independent from oil,’ she added. ‘It is also the opportunity for large urban areas, and this is as important in emerging Asian countries as it is for many other countries around the world, to have lower harmfull emissions.

‘Germany, as the country where the first car was built, has a significant and ambitious plan to be there with you when this new form of mobility is developed.’