GUANGZHOU, China — In the United States, politicians voted on Thursday for a proposal that included repeal of a $7,500 tax credit for buyers of electric cars. In China, auto executives from around the world were gathering to talk about ambitious plans to sell more of those vehicles here.

The politics in Washington have not explicitly pushed carmakers to prioritize China. But the dueling approaches have added to a growing consensus among auto executives — even in the United States, where General Motors and Ford are planning to build more electric vehicles — that China will lead the world in the fast-growing sector.

Volkswagen announced on Thursday that it planned to introduce to the Chinese market 25 models of electric cars between 2020 and 2025, in addition to the 15 electric models it already had planned to bring to the country by 2020. The company and its joint venture partners will invest almost $12 billion in the effort, said Jochem Heizmann, the chief executive of Volkswagen Group China.

Mr. Heizmann said that most of the electric car models in VW’s short-term product pipeline for China are based on existing designs for internal combustion engines. But a majority of the 25 additional electric car models will be created from the ground up as electric cars, he said, an approach that allows engineers to make very different design decisions to maximize energy efficiency and passenger comfort.