The German government tabled plans to get a million electric cars zipping around the country by 2020, offering sweeteners to jumpstart national giants like BMW and Volkswagen into action.

"It is the federal government's aim that by 2020, there will be a million electric cars on Germany's streets," said a draft of the "national electro-mobility plan" obtained by AFP.

Berlin plans to spark development of electric cars by offering incentives for research in area such as batteries and recharging systems, as it battles to catch up with Asian firms who have zoomed ahead of their German rivals.

The plan added that Berlin is "examining an incentive programme for the purchase of 100,000 electric cars," but it failed to give enough details, drawing fire from green groups.

Environmental organisations had called for a subsidy of around €5,000 for consumers to buy electric cars along the lines of Berlin's five-billion-euro "cash-for-clunkers" scheme to support the traditional auto industry.

"The government has introduced a subsidy to sell an old technology but has not put in place incentives to buy the new electric vehicles," Renate Kuenast, parliamentary group leader of the Green Party, told the Weser-Kurier regional daily.

German luxury car maker BMW has already teamed up with auto parts maker Bosch and its Korean partner Samsung to supply lithium-ion batteries for a future electric city car.

Volkswagen hopes to turn out its first all-electric car in 2013, VW head Martin Winterkorn said in July.

Meanwhile, Daimler launched its first hybrid model earlier in June, almost 10 years after the market leader, Japan's Toyota.