Singapore seen as ideal for electric vehicles

Its small land area is easy to blanket with charging stations: Cleantech Agency
Samuel Ee, Business Times 18 Nov 09;

THE conditions are right for electric vehicles here - that's the message that Plug-In Singapore 2009 wants to send.

This Alternative Energy Vehicle Conference Expo is the first electric vehicle (EV) event to be held here, and the largest EV event in South-east Asia, said organiser Cleantech Agency.

The one-day event - this Friday at the Meritus Mandarin hotel - will bring together more than 20 experts in the EV, hybrid and alternative fuel vehicle and infrastructure fields.

With Singapore's Energy Market Authority and the EV Task Force, they will look at how to define frameworks for next-generation clean transport in the Asia-Pacific.

According to Cleantech Agency CEO Marc Pomerleau, Singapore has a unique opportunity to be a leader in the clean transport movement for a several.

'Singapore is an island with a small land area - 250 sq km - that would be easy to blanket with charging stations given the right government incentives and policy,' he said.

'Singapore also has and can attract the intellectual capital required to develop next generation EV technologies,' added Mr Pomerleau.

And finally, Singapore has a track record of enacting policies that are'forward-thinking and aggressive in terms of promoting technology development,' Mr Pomerleau said .

'Simply by maintaining current duties on gas-combustion engines and levying no duty on EVs, Singapore could change the transport landscape from a polluting system based on expensive and finite foreign oil to a clean transport system based on locally generated electricity,' he said.

It helps that EVs are slowly becoming a more common sight on the roads.

University of Hong Kong don CC Chan, a consultant to various governments and president of the World Electric Vehicle Association, said that there are about 10,000 EVs being driven worldwide.

'The key factor for the success of electric vehicles is the merging of the following three issues: the availability of EV products with good performance and affordable cost; an effective and friendly infrastructure; and an innovative business model,' he said.

These issues will be addressed at Plug-In Singapore 2009 by technical experts, industry leaders, financiers and government officers.

Among them are Chris Borroni-Bird of General Motors, which is preparing the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid for roll-out in late 2010, and Albert Lam of Detroit Electric, which has partnered Proton to offer EVs next year.

'Plug-In Singapore will serve as a timely bridge and switchboard to integrate and inter-connect the technology, capital, resource and market,' said Prof Chan.

Cleantech's Mr Pomerleau said that Plug-in Singapore 2009 is designed to address two of the major challenges that the world faces: cutting carbon emissions and breaking oil dependency.

It requires more than just rising awareness of global warming issues to produce any significant change, he said.

'What must happen is the government must provide economic incentives to drive consumer behaviour so that EVs, from a cost basis, are on par with gas combustion cars.

'And electric charging infrastructure must be set up so charging is as easy as fuelling a conventional vehicle.'

Finally, Mr Pomerleau said that EV technology must continually improve so that performance, safety and reliability of EVs can become superior to those of conventional petrol-powered vehicles.

For more information on Plug-In Singapore 2009, go to http://www.cleantechagency.com/plugin-sg