More than 600 electric vehicle chargers to be installed at public car parks in the next 12 months

• Chargers for electric vehicles will be installed at more than 200 public car parks
• These will be at public housing and industrial estates, public parks, community centres and within the Central Business District
• The authorities are targeting to have the first chargers ready by the end of 2021

SINGAPORE — Drivers of electric vehicles (EVs) may be able to charge at public car parks by the end of this year, as the authorities on Friday (Sept 3) awarded tenders to build more than 600 charging points.

In a joint statement, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) and the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) announced that tenders had been awarded to two consortiums: One formed by ComfortDelGro Engineering and Engie South East Asia, and another formed by Primech A&P, Charge+, Sunseap Group and Oyika. 

The EV chargers will be built in the next 12 months at more than 200 car parks across the island at public housing and industrial estates, public parks, community centres and within the Central Business District.

Under this pilot tender, the ComfortDelGro consortium will install 210 chargers in the central region, 120 in the eastern part of Singapore and 140 in the west, while Primech A&P and its partners will build 50 in the north and 100 in the north-east.

Transport Minister S Iswaran, at an LTA industry event where the announcement was made, said: “The target is to deploy the first chargers by the end of this year.”

No details were available yet on where the first batch of chargers will be located.

The move is part of the Government’s plan to deploy 40,000 charging points in public car parks by 2030 before phasing out petrol and diesel cars by 2040.

Already, some companies such as utilities firm SP Group and petrol firms have started rolling out charging points at malls and petrol kiosks. 

EV charging company Bluecharge has also started opening up to EV owners some charging stations used by carsharing firm BlueSG that are located in public car parks.

The authorities said that the tenders were awarded based on the quality of charging services being offered by the consortia, their business models and the competitiveness of their charging prices.

The companies will also be responsible for maintaining the chargers and addressing any issues surrounding their use, such as preventing users from hogging charging lots, URA and LTA said.

Mr Iswaran said the Ministry of Transport and LTA have been working on the design of the market structure for EV charging in public residential car parks. They will also look into necessary upgrades to the electrical infrastructure.

He also announced that a set of national guidelines for the development of driverless vehicles has been updated.

The revised standards, known as Technical Reference 68 and first published in 2019, contain improvements to areas such as machine learning, cybersecurity and operational safety in software design.

LTA and public transport operators will also be launching a tender to deploy new solar power systems across the public transport infrastructure, Mr Iswaran said.

A notable feature of the tender, he added, is that it will seek ways of installing solar panels at less conventional areas such as covered linkways and overhead bridges. 

“This will not only help us reduce emissions, but also energy costs,” he said.