Singapore turns into electric cars two years after Tesla’s scolding

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After years of not doing much to promote the adoption of electric cars, Singapore has started to adopt them.

Transport Minister Ong Ye Kung, speaking in parliament last week, said there was a positive impact of liquid carbon on the shift from gas drinkers to electric vehicles, “even if electricity is generated by fossil fuels.” And last month, Singapore pledged S $ 30 million ($ 22 million) over five years for EV-related initiatives.

“With our urban environment, Singapore is ideal as a test site for the rapid adoption of EVs,” said Ong.

This is a change of face from a few years ago, when Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Inc. has scolded the city-state several times on Twitter. In early 2019, he described the island as “undesirable”. The government “does not support” electric vehicles, he said in 2018.

According Zafar Momin, associate associate professor at Nanyang Business School at Nanyang Technological University, when the first Tesla was imported in 2016, local regulators were in a dilemma on how to evaluate it. After some debate, the owner was taxed at S $ 15,000 for carbon emissions generated during charging the battery.

“Penalizing an EV, instead of providing incentives like the rest of the world, was contrary to Singapore’s aspiration to be a smart and green nation,” said Zafar. “This incident may have led Musk to form the opinion that he tweeted.”

While the amount Singapore is spending on EVs pales in comparison to the billions of dollars China is spending, it is a much smaller market and the size of the country also means that public transport is an effective way to get around.

In fact, Singapore plans to have all buses powered by electricity by 2040, as part of its goal of achieving zero net emissions as soon as it is feasible in the second half of the century. It plans to phase out fossil fuel vehicles by 2040 and it will not allow diesel-powered cars or taxis to be registered from 2025 onwards.

As part of the effort, Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat said in the 2021 budget that 60,000 recharging points in public and private parking lots will be installed by 2030, an increase from the previous target of 28,000.

Road taxes levied on mass-market electric vehicles have been reduced by up to 40%, so they are comparable to cars with an internal combustion engine and the government will remove the minimum additional registration fee of $ 5,000 for electric vehicles from January 2022, helping buyers maximize early adoption discounts, which are limited to S $ 20,000 per vehicle.

After deducting the minimum additional registration fee, more than 80% of respondents in a survey conducted by the Motorist car app expressed interest in adopting the electric car.

Such moves could help boost EVs to about 4% of Singapore’s total passenger car sales by 2023, or about 3,300 units, according to BloombergNEF. In comparison, electric vehicle registrations, which include passenger cars, buses and taxis, in the city-state were 1,396 last year, up from 1,334 in 2019, Ground Transportation Authority data show.

“Government efforts to ensure the availability of chargers in public parking lots and public homes will help improve consumer acceptance of EVs,” said analyst Allen Tom Abraham of BNEF.

“The lack of public EV chargers can be a major obstacle to rapid adoption,” he added, noting that this is particularly the case in Singapore, where the majority of the population lives in dense, tall apartments that do not have exclusive parking spaces, very less space for individual car charging stations.

Musk has not recently accessed Twitter about Singapore, but Tesla has launched a dedicated sales portal that went live in February. Consumers can use the site to order a Model 3, Tesla’s most popular and affordable sedan, starting at around S $ 113,000, and expect delivery in mid-2021. The cars are likely to be made and shipped from the Tesla plant in Shanghai. Tesla representatives in China did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The news was received with enthusiasm on social networks, with the buzz mainly centered on cost. Singapore is one of the most expensive places in the world to buy a car with excise duty and registration fees sometimes more than double the market value of a vehicle. People must also bid for a limited number of car ownership licenses that are auctioned by the government and that allow drivers to own a car for a maximum of 10 years.

Once the so-called right certificate expires, owners have to make an offer for a new 10-year license, export the car or dispose of it. The price of S $ 113,000 for Model 3 excludes this certificate, which may cost another S $ 47,000, depending on the capacity of the engine.

“Cars in Singapore have never been, and I doubt that they will ever be described as cheap compared to similar makes and models anywhere in the world,” said Tesla owner Adrian Peh, who imported his EV from Hong Kong in 2016. ” I understand that building a sustainable future is not cheap, but if everyone runs away, then what kind of future will we leave for our children and grandchildren? “