Electric vehicle owners can pay to use BlueSG chargers from today

Christopher Tan Straits Times 23 Apr 19;

SINGAPORE - Electric car-sharing operator BlueSG will release 99 charging points across 25 locations for public use at 3pm on Tuesday (April 23).

The move comes about 18 months after the company started operations here. The number of chargers open to all electric vehicle (EV) owners constitutes 13 per cent of BlueSG's network of 755 chargers at 191 stations.

The company had previously committed to opening up 20 per cent of its projected network of 2,000 chargers by 2020.

In a statement on Tuesday morning, BlueSG said private owners will have to subscribe to the service on a mobile application or on the BlueSG website. A year's membership costs $20.

Tariffs are $1 per hour for the first three hours, and $2 per hour after that. All available charging service stations will be displayed on the BlueSG app; and EV owners can book a charging point up to 45 minutes in advance.

Observers said BlueSG chargers are best for casual charging when an EV driver is looking for parking. This is because they are mostly slow chargers, which will take several hours to fully charge up a typical electric car.

They added that the tariffs are relatively high on their own, but are more palatable when viewed as part of parking charges.

BlueSG has 450 cars, and some 30,000 members. Since December 2017, its cars have been rented 200,000 times, and have covered 3.7 million km.