Can an ‘old’ EV survive a COE renewal?

SINGAPORE – Many electric vehicles (EVs) are now sold in Singapore with battery warranties that span eight years or 150,000km.

More recently, one EV brand is covering the battery for 10 years and one million kilometres – figuratively enough to get to the moon and back, with a 200,000km buffer to check out the satellites that the newly established National Space Agency of Singapore will help to launch in the coming years.

Other than Tesla chief executive Elon Musk’s Roadster, no other EV has been shot out of the earth’s atmosphere, but you get the idea. Carmakers want people to believe that their EV batteries can last a long time. This is crucial because the battery is the single most important and costliest part of an EV.

Long service life is particularly important as the car population in Singapore is expected to age in the coming years. This is because the PARF (preferential additional registration fee) rebate, which is the financial incentive to deregister cars early, will plummet from February 2026. As such, more owners will find it cheaper to renew the certificates of entitlement (COEs) to extend their vehicle’s lifespan beyond a decade.

Those who buy a new internal combustion engine (ICE) car today will probably have little doubt that it will remain serviceable after a decade of plying the Pan Island Expressway, roaming Sengkang and frequently zipping to Melaka and back.

Extending the COE to use the car for longer will help compensate for the drastically reduced PARF rebate.

As for EVs, longevity beyond the 10th year is unknown. Even before the PARF revision, EVs – because of the upfront incentives given to encourage adoption – qualify for very little rebate, so there is no financial disincentive to renewing their COEs.

My take is that the majority of EVs from pre-2022 will not be sticking around when their 10-year COE is due, and it may not be because their batteries have conked out.

Rather, it is due to technological obsolescence and, potentially, a lack of support from independent workshops and spare parts suppliers.

EVs have been likened to smartphones. With the Apple iPhone, people saw how earlier generations underwent massive changes while more recent ones offer incremental improvements.

Electric cars from the recent past are likely in their iPhone 3 era. This was the period before Apple introduced advancements such as front-facing cameras and sharper displays. For EVs, progress seen in the more recent models includes longer operating range, faster charging speed and, just as importantly, a more mature user experience, as carmakers iron out quirks like overly aggressive lane-keeping assistance.

Still, at least EV owners have the comfort of long battery warranty, if the qualifying conditions are met, that is.

Typically, carmakers will step in when the battery’s state of health dips below 70 per cent. The worst-case scenario is having a battery that has not quite deteriorated enough to breach this threshold. Other than driving range, a deteriorated battery tends to be unable to accept charge as quickly.

So, for a 450km range EV, losing 25 per cent means ending up with a car that cannot travel more than 340km and takes longer to fill up. This is bound to undermine the ownership experience.

Given the importance that motorists place on range, an EV with a sub-optimal range will be hard to sell without the owner footing the bill of a repair.

Another critical factor to consider is whether an EV can be maintained down the road. The more popular a model is, the higher the chance of a steady supply of spare parts and technicians with the skills to maintain and repair it.

In the legacy world of ICE models, the ease of repair and maintenance is also a big reason it is more common to see older Japanese cars on Singapore roads than, say, French and Italian models.

From this perspective, big sellers from brands such as BYD and Tesla will be a better bet than less popular brands. One must also assume that EVs from legacy brands, such as BMW and Toyota, will continue to be well supported by their longstanding Singapore partners.

Just as people celebrate the endless stream of new EV brands entering Singapore, they should also be wary that not all of them will be around in the long run. If a brand exits Singapore, where can the owner go for after-sales support?

Modern cars – especially EVs – are more reliant on software and data connectivity than older models. This can be a hindrance to keeping a car on the road as it ages. It is much easier to identify and replace a blown fuse than it is to find a bug in a line of computer code.

When Fisker, an American EV maker, folded in 2024, owners were left to fend for themselves and various software-connected services became inaccessible.

Adding to the concerns for keeping an EV on the road beyond the 10th year is the higher road tax for cars with renewed COE. Peaking at 50 per cent, the road tax surcharge increases by 10 per cent every year beyond the 10th year.

For a 100kW EV, the annual road tax bill balloons from an already high $1,502 in the first 10 years to max out at $1,903 from the 15th year onwards, which is no trifling sum. In contrast, the road tax payable for a 1.6-litre car increases from $744 initially to $1,116 from the 15th year onwards.

There are no signs of the road tax regime changing for EVs, although you never know. But for other factors such as capability and quality, the case for renewing the COEs and keeping them on the road beyond 10 years should improve for the coming generations of EVs.

Hopefully, you do not have to go to the moon and back to pick the right one.