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Phoenix666 writes:

China has the world's most aggressive electric car goals. Communist leaders are promoting them to clean up smog-choked cities and in hopes of taking the lead in an emerging technology.

Regulators have jolted the industry with a proposal to require electrics to account for at least 8 percent of each brand's production by next year.

At the auto show, the global industry's biggest marketing event of the year, almost every global and Chinese auto brand is showing at least one electric concept vehicle, if not a market-ready model.

Heizmann said VW, which vies with GM for the title of China's top-selling automaker, expects annual sales of at least 400,000 "new energy vehicles" – the government's term for electric or gasoline-electric hybrids – by 2020 and 1.5 million by 2025.

The vast majority of Chinese get around by smog-free vehicles already. They're called bicycles.

Original Submission