SINGAPORE - Electric vehicle (EV) charging points have been installed in around 300 Housing Board carparks, or around 15 per cent of all HDB carparks.
“We are on track to achieve our target for one-third of HDB carparks to have charging points by the end of this year,” said Senior Minister of State for Transport Amy Khor on Wednesday, when she provided the updated figures.
The large-scale tender, which was awarded to five companies to install and operate, aims to have at least 12,000 charging points in nearly 2,000 carparks by the end of 2025. By 2030, Singapore wants to have more than 60,000 EV charging points, with 40,000 in public carparks and 20,000 on private premises.
The Government’s Singapore Green Plan 2030 pushes for electric vehicles to ensure that all vehicles are powered by cleaner energy by 2040. These are expected to include both fully electric vehicles and hybrids.
Dr Khor, who is also Senior Minister of State for Sustainability and the Environment, was speaking at the Marina Bay Sands at an event by EVCo, a joint venture company between SMRT’s business arm Strides Mobility and DST Electric Vehicle Rental (Shenzhen). The firm was celebrating how its electric vans helped customers avoid producing over 300 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
Carbon avoidance reduces carbon emissions by preventing the production of carbon dioxide in the first place. In this case, the emissions are avoided when customers make the switch to electric vehicles.
EVCo chief executive Fuji Foo told the media that the amount of CO2 avoided was based on the distance that its electric vans travelled, factoring in the type of vehicle, which affects energy consumption, as well as EV charging information.
EVCo leases out electric vans and uses data analytics to find ways to improve the way the fleet is used and reduce its overall emissions.
The company plans to expand into Asean, Australia and New Zealand. The next stop is slated to be Thailand, where it will begin leasing EVs by the last quarter of 2023.
Ms Judy Lee, who chairs EVCo’s board, said that the company will establish distribution networks through partnerships and tap customers’ regional networks to expand, rather than go it alone.
The company said that since its launch in April 2022, it has over 30 customers in different industries. These include small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in logistics, security, pest control and facilities management.
Security services firm Certis, one of EVCo’s customers, said that over a distance of more than 9,600km, the use of electric vans has cut its CO2 emissions by 2.6 tonnes.
Pest control company Anticimex said that its arrangement with EVCo has helped it lower the average cost of vehicle ownership by 30 per cent. This takes into consideration the purchasing price, operating cost as well as the cost of getting rid of the vehicle at the end of its useful life.
While leasing out electric vans is EVCo’s main business, it is partnering local bank OCBC to extend “sustainability-linked financing” to help SMEs which want to buy the vehicles. Mr Melvyn Low, the bank’s head of global transaction banking, said at the event that OCBC is also working to allow users to make payment for EV charging on EVCo’s fleet management smartphone application.
EVCo on Wednesday also launched a digital dashboard that lets customers track their vehicle fleet’s environmental impact, down to the individual vehicle, to help firms set environmental targets.
Correction note: An earlier version of the story stated that EV chargers were installed at 300 HDB carparks under a large-scale tender called in November 2022. The Ministry of Transport has clarified that the number of carparks also include those under a pilot tender called jointly by the Urban Redevelopment Authority and the LTA
