SINGAPORE – Drivers here now have more places to juice up their electric vehicles (EVs), as more than 2,400 charging points have been installed at about 700 Housing Board residential carparks across all 26 towns to date.
Drivers of electric taxis, private-hire cars and commercial fleet vehicles can also top up their batteries much faster, with the roll-out of the first public fast chargers in HDB commercial carparks.
With these fast chargers, drivers can get half of a full charge in 30 minutes, on average, said EV-Electric (EVe) Charging, a Land Transport Authority (LTA) subsidiary overseeing the deployment of public EV chargers, on Jan 18.
In contrast, an EV typically reaches a full charge after six to eight hours using a slow charger.
The new fast chargers are at Basement 2 of the HDB Hub in Toa Payoh and Basement 1 of the Oasis Terraces neighbourhood centre in Punggol.
Launching the chargers at an event at the HDB Hub on Jan 18, Senior Minister of State for Transport Amy Khor said the authorities will look to deploy fast chargers at other HDB neighbourhood and town centres as well as at JTC Corporation industrial estates that fleet drivers frequent.
She said more details will be made public in the coming months.
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Dr Khor, who is also Senior Minister of State for Sustainability and the Environment, added: “We have achieved the interim target of equipping one in three HDB carparks with EV chargers by 2023.”
She said: “Over the next couple of years, we will deploy EV chargers to the remaining HDB carparks to ensure convenience.”
The Government’s aim is to install at least 12,000 EV chargers in about 2,000 HDB carparks by 2025.
At the HDB Hub, energy company Shell now operates four fast-charging points, powered by two 120 kilowatt (kW) direct current (DC) dual-gun chargers. There are also two 22kW alternating current (AC) chargers there.
At Oasis Terraces, SP Mobility, a subsidiary of utilities company SP Group, runs two fast-charging points, powered by a single 100kW DC dual-gun charger, and four 22kW AC chargers.
Unlike AC chargers, a DC charger can feed power directly to a car’s battery and does not need to use the vehicle’s on-board converter. However, whether an EV can exploit the maximum power of a charger depends on the capabilities of the vehicle model.
A dual-gun charger can juice up two EVs at the same time.
Shell’s fast-charging service costs 72 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh), and SP Mobility’s costs 69.8 cents per kWh.
In comparison, the cost of using slower commercial chargers here starts from 53 cents per kWh.
Senior Minister of State for Transport Amy Khor at the electric vehicle charging station at the HDB Hub carpark on Jan 18. ST PHOTO: JASON QUAH
With a fast charger, EV drivers will be able to get an extra 100km to 200km in mileage with a 30-minute to one-hour charge, Dr Khor said.
EVe said the decision to deploy fast chargers at HDB carparks was in response to industry feedback.
Most fast chargers are now at commercial places such as malls and offices. EVe said heavy EV users such as cabbies and fleet drivers have asked for more fast chargers at public carparks, where parking rates are more affordable, and where there are amenities such as coffee shops.
Overnight slow charging, however, remains the predominant charging strategy for private electric cars, Dr Khor said, adding that most drivers need to charge their EVs only once every five or six days if they clock an average daily mileage of 50km.
She said: “While slow chargers will meet the needs of most EV drivers, we also recognise that fast chargers are needed as a supplement.”
The new fast chargers are at Basement 2 of the HDB Hub in Toa Payoh and Basement 1 of the Oasis Terraces neighbourhood centre in Punggol. ST PHOTO: JASON QUAH
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Dr Khor noted that new electric car registrations formed 18.2 per cent of all new car registrations in 2023 – 50 per cent more than in 2022, and almost five times the figure in 2021.
In November 2023, registrations for cleaner-energy cars, which include fully electric and hybrid vehicles, crossed 75 per cent of all car registrations for the first time, she added.
There are now almost 11,000 fully electric cars on the roads here, and more than 15,200 EVs, after including other vehicle classes such as taxis and motorcycles.
As part of the Singapore Green Plan 2030, the Government’s aim is for all vehicles here to run on cleaner energy by 2040, with the registration of new diesel cars and taxis to stop from 2025 and the registration of new pure combustion engine cars to end in 2030.
While EV adoption has climbed, the lack of EV chargers has been a sticking point for drivers yet to make the switch.
In November 2022, five companies were picked to roll out EV chargers at 2,000 public carparks under a large-scale tender to expand the charging network.
The bulk of the chargers are 7.4kW slow chargers mostly located on the third deck of HDB multi-storey carparks.
The large-scale tender followed an earlier one awarded in September 2021 to install more than 600 charging points in public carparks.
Singapore aims to have 60,000 EV charging points by 2030, of which 40,000 will be in public carparks and 20,000 on private premises such as malls and condominiums.
As at the end of December 2023, there were nearly 6,000 charging points in public and private spaces islandwide, said LTA.
Mr Charles Ban, 52, who has been driving an electric taxi for more than two years, uses a slow charger at a carpark near his home in Woodlands Ring Road, which he finds convenient.
But one problem with overnight slow charging is that he sometimes has to wake up in the middle of the night to unplug his taxi, so that it does not prevent others from using the charger.
“Thankfully, at the moment, there aren’t that many EVs in my area, but once the population goes up, it will be a problem,” he said.
Mr Ban said fast chargers in HDB neighbourhoods would improve the situation.
“I can go home and have a quick lunch while charging my taxi,” he added.
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EV chargers installed at 700 HDB carparks; new public fast chargers in Toa Payoh, Punggol
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