Transport Minister announces plans to make electric vehicles more popular

Transport Minister Ong Ye Kung announced that the Government is ramping up its initiatives to make electric vehicles (EVs) more attractive to drivers and plans to vastly increase the number of EV chargers in the city-state.

In a Facebook post published yesterday (12 Nov), Mr Ong said that EV technology is advancing rapidly and that industry watchers believe that cost parity between EVs and Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) vehicles will happen around 2025, or earlier.

Today, there are two incentive schemes for EVs today – the EV Early Adoption Incentive, and the Vehicular Emissions Scheme. Sharing that the Vehicular Emissions Scheme is being enhanced, Mr Ong said that both schemes together will lower taxes on EVs by up to S$45,000 from 1 January 2021.

The Government has plans to make EVs more popular by improving how convenient it is to charge an EV. Mr Ong revealed that the plan is to have 28,000 chargers in Singapore from the current 1,800 chargers available today.

Extolling the need to promote EVs, he added: “But how we get from here to there is important, and we are reviewing the overall plan. We can better tap on commercial investment and expertise. Will announce when ready. What is clear is that EVs will become a reality, but we need to embrace and promote it.”