BlueSG to open charging stations to drivers of other electric vehicles from 2019

SINGAPORE — As part of its move to grow the “ecosystem” here for electric vehicles, electric car-sharing operator BlueSG will begin opening up its charging stations to third-party owners of electric vehicles from next year, a year earlier than planned.

The charging points for privately owned electric cars will be located at Housing and Development Board car parks as well as private car parks, and those operated by the Urban Redevelopment Authority and national industrial developer JTC.

Making the latest announcement during its first-year anniversary celebrations on Tuesday (Dec 11), the company declined to say how many of such charging points will be released in the first quarter of next year, or how much subscription fees will cost.

Its managing director Franck Vitte said that such details will be released in the near future.

BlueSG, a subsidiary of Blue Solutions which is owned by French conglomerate Bollore Group, had said before that by 2020, about 20 per cent of its charging points will be made available to privately owned electric cars. It also plans to grow its fleet from 300 cars now to 1,000 cars, and to have 500 stations providing 2,000 charging points.

BlueSG now has 135 stations with 531 charging points.

By the end of this year, it expects this number to grow to 591 charging points at 150 locations.

On how the system will work for third-party electric-car drivers, the company said that private-vehicle owners may reserve a charging point in advance through the BlueSG mobile application, and will pay for the charging by the minute.

For the first half of next year, BlueSG will also be rolling out corporate membership plans, available by “bundled packages”, to a selected number of drivers. Companies will be billed directly for the usage of their employees.

The operator had been in talks with businesses for the past two to three months, and said that corporate prices will also be made known closer to the launch.

USERS ASK FOR MORE STATIONS

In a customer satisfaction survey done last month with 1,249 respondents who use its rental services, BlueSG found that 90 per cent of them would like to see more charging stations being built.

Mr Vitte said: “When we asked them what improvement they would like to see, the very first answer is that they want to have more stations. This is our objective — to build more stations where they are, where they go.”

The survey also found that more than a third of respondents had to walk more than 11 minutes to a BlueSG station. The company said that it will be working on this by providing more charging locations.

BlueSG’s commercial and network director Jenny Lim said: “This is where we continue to work, to see how we can have the stations nearer to where customers want to go, or want to start renting a car.”

OTHER ANNOUNCEMENTS

• BlueSG will be collaborating with Sentosa Development Corporation to set up its stations on the resort island. BlueSG cars entering the island will enjoy free admission from 2019. Users need only to pay for the rental of the electric car.
   
• Charging stations will be installed at five CapitaLand malls. The first, at Plaza Singapura, starts operations on Tuesday.
   
• BlueSG will open a charging station at Our Tampines Hub.