Adoption Rates of Electric Passenger Vehicles

The following question stood in the name of Mr Shawn Huang Wei Zhong –

To ask the Minister for Transport (a) what are the adoption rates of electric passenger vehicles over the past year; (b) what are the projected rates for 2022 and 2023; (c) whether the build-up of electric charging infrastructure at public and private spaces are on track to support the increase in adoption rates; and (d) whether there are considerations to bring forward the implementation timeline for clean energy buses.

Mr Deputy Speaker, the number of new electric car, taxi and bus registrations between January 2021 and June 2021 is 1.3% of total new car, taxi and bus registrations in that period. This is higher than the registration rate of 0.3% for the whole of 2020. The Electric Vehicle (EV) Early Adoption Incentive and the enhanced Vehicular Emissions Scheme, both launched earlier this year, help to narrow the upfront cost gap between electric cars and internal combustion engine cars. With the launch of these schemes, as well as lower battery costs and more EV models from car makers, we expect that this number will continue to grow in the coming years.

We aim to put in place 60,000 charging points by 2030. There are around 2,000 charging points in Singapore today. We will add another 600 charging points at 200 public carparks by next year through the Government’s pilot tender on EV charger deployment. In addition, we are encouraging private premises owners to install charging points at their premises, such as condominiums or retail malls. Overall, the combined efforts from the Government and the private sector to improve coverage of our national charging point network will be able to meet EV charging needs.

On public buses, the Government has committed to buy only cleaner energy buses since 2020. As public buses are replaced after being in service for 17 years, this means that there should be no more pure diesel public buses on our roads before 2040. Cleaner energy buses bring significant benefits, such as cleaner air and less noise pollution. We would have deployed 60 electric buses on our roads by the end of this year. In the years ahead, we will continue to adapt our infrastructure and operational processes to support a much larger bus fleet that runs on cleaner energy.