Electric Cars Sold in Last Six Months and Plans to Set Up Electric Charging Stations and Reskill Automotive Industry

Mr Sharael Taha asked the Minister for Transport (a) in the last six months, how many electric cars have been sold and what percentage of total cars sold have been electric cars; (b) whether the current plan to provide electric chargers in public buildings is able to meet the forecasted demand; (c) what plans are in place to assist private buildings to set up electric charging stations; and (d) whether plans are in place to begin reskilling the automotive industry and the petrol station staff to prepare them for the electric vehicle growth.

In the second half of 2021, there were 1,400 new electric car registrations, comprising 7.2% of total new car registrations during this period.

We have plans to deploy 60,000 charging points by 2030, of which 40,000 will be at public carparks and 20,000 at private premises. To do this, we will progressively deploy EV charging points in HDB carparks based on available electrical capacity and upgrade electrical infrastructure where necessary. We assess that this will be adequate to meet expected EV charging demand in aggregate based on the projected EV population, since a typical electric car user will only require a full charge roughly once a week. That said, we recognise that there may be some parking locations with strong charging demand. We will work with EV charging operators to develop solutions for such locations. We will also review and update our charging point deployment plans based on actual adoption rates.

There is strong interest among private building owners today to install EV charging points in commercial developments like retail malls and petrol stations. The Government is also facilitating deployment of EV chargers at non-landed private residences through the EV Common Charger Grant.

Our transition to EVs will require our automotive workforce to pick up new skills that can be applied to EVs and EV charging systems. Although this is a medium-term transition, the Government is already working with industry partners to step up support for our workers. For example, the Singapore Motor Workshop Association Training Academy, supported by Enterprise Singapore (ESG), Workforce Singapore (WSG) and JTC Corporation (JTC), will train at least 1,000 automotive workshop technicians over the next three years to maintain EVs.