SINGAPORE — As the Certificate of Entitlement for his conventional Nissan car neared its expiry date, Mr Adrian Oh decided it was time to put his lingering idea of switching to an electric vehicle into action.Each week, TODAY’s long-running Big Read series delves into the trends and issues that matter. This week, we look at some teething issues faced by drivers of electric vehicles, as more of them are put on Singapore roads.
“We mainly wanted it for the sustainability factor, in terms of emissions on the road, as well as the stability in fuel prices compared to the more volatile petrol pump prices,” said the 58-year-old, who works in the manufacturing industry. Earlier this month, Minister for Transport Chee Hong Tat said that over 7,100 EV charging points had been installed islandwide, and more than a third of HDB carparks have installed charging points, describing the progress as “on track to support a larger EV population”.For the first five months of this year, about one-third of new car registrations here were electric ones — compared to almost one in five in 2023, and slightly above one in 10 in 2022.
Analysts however suggested that this would not be the right metric to focus on because it naturally takes time to replace existing cars on the road with new ones. Even after getting over non-EV drivers’ hesitance over issues like having fewer non-EV parking lots, the process from residents’ approval to actual installation could take a long time.EVs are generally more expensive than their conventional car counterparts, though this concern has been addressed to a certain extent in recent years with the introduction of more mass-market EV models.
Some experts also made comparisons to how automatic-transmission cars also took a while to gain popularity in the market here, saying that EVs, too, will eventually gain natural acceptance. And on this count, he noted there are studies that show that EVs leave a larger carbon footprint in its production stage, and would take six to seven years of “intense” use to achieve parity with a traditional car in terms of overall emissions.Transport experts caution that while any prospective EV buyer would welcome more perks and subsidies, it would not be advisable for the authorities to rush into handing them out.