Singapore Has Over 3,000 EV Charging Points. Malaysia Catching Up?

Singapore’s Land Transport Authority recently announced a progress update in the country’s effort to boost its EV infrastructure with the island nation now boasting over 3,000 publicly available charging points throughout.

The Straits Times reports that at the end of July, there is roughly one EV charging point for every two passenger electric vehicles in use there, but the LTA has expanded upon that figure slightly with the more recent installation of more than 200 charging points in 70 public carparks with another 400 scheduled to be put up by early 2023.

Singapore planting EV chargers like trees

That’s a pretty quick rate, but their urgency is perhaps a necessary one given the adoption rate of EVs there and the country’s intention to reduce air pollution in such a confined space. In fact, with more than 3,000 EV chargers already up and running, there should be at least 4 public EV charging points for every square kilometre of Singapore’s total land area.

According to ComfortDelGro Engie, which has erected 100 chargers within parking structures all over Singapore, usage of these stations has seen a 3x increase since April 2022. As part of a pilot tender, they plan to install another 479 charging points, further strengthening Singapore’s total EV infrastructure.

One EV charging point for every two passenger EVs in Singapore

Meanwhile, French firm TotalEnergies responsible for some 1,500 charging points, are also echoing a similarly sharp 3x increase in usage this year compared to 2021. All parties concerned, private and public, expect this trend to continue as the country continues its push toward sustainable mobility.

In Singapore’s case, the appeal of an EV is dramatically more pronounced given that the huge majority of driving will be done in slower-moving urban traffic and there are rarely instances where a protracted long-distance drive ever becomes necessary.

Coming up soon is a large-scale tender to deploy at least 12,000 more public charging points at Housing Development Board (HDB) carparks, which is to be awarded at the end of 2022, making all HDB towns EV ready by 2025.

Adjacent to this, the LTA is also aiming to independently install another 60,000 public charging stations by 2030 comprising of the slower but less costly AC variety.

This will give EV drivers in Singapore ample choice to charge up their cars wherever they end up parking for the day, either at home or out and about. And given the relatively short distances needed to be travelled, quick top ups are all that’s needed to indefinitely maintain a healthy amount of charge in their batteries.

What about Malaysia?

We might have to do a deeper dive on the state of Malaysia’s charging infrastructure as the information out there is pretty scattered so nobody has a clear idea of what’s operational at any given time.

chargEV remains the most widespread network of chargers at some 300 stations but we’ve found some that were flat out not working upon reaching them.

Automakers and energy suppliers such as Shell and Petronas have taken it upon themselves to erect DC rapid charging stations to promote their own solutions but these remain few and far between.

The Malaysian government has promised tens of thousands of public chargers to be installed within the next few years both independently and through partnerships with the private sector but these projects clearly have not kicked into high gear.

For now, it's pretty much a requirement for local EV owners to have a home charging solution in place (such as an AC wallbox) to keep your battery levels in the green.