Solutions
for Tomorrow

Electric vehicles, or EVs, are gaining traction worldwide. Governments in countries such as the UK, the US, and China have announced policies and targets to promote the use of EVs. Several major vehicle manufacturers have also announced plans to introduce more EV models in the near future .

DPM Heng Swee Keat announced in Budget 2020 Singapore’s vision to phase out internal combustion engine vehicles and have all vehicles run on cleaner energy by 2040. EV adoption will be the centerpiece of this vision. As part of the recently announced Singapore Green Plan 2030, Singapore targets to have 60,000 EV charging points by 2030, of which 40,000 will be at public carparks and 20,000 at private premises. And in March this year, the government announced that it plans to end new registrations for diesel cars and taxis in 2025.

Yet, EVs form less than 0.2% of Singapore’s vehicle population. Specifically, according to data from the Land Transport Authority (LTA), as at end of April 2021, there were only 1415 electric cars, 4 electric taxis, 2 electric motorcycles, and 130 goods and other vehicles in Singapore. On the other hand, public interest in EV ownership has ballooned. More Singapore residents, 50% of the people surveyed in Sep 2020, are interested in buying an EV as their next car, compared to just 35% of the survey respondents in Jan 2020. (Source: Roland Berger Autonomous Disruption Radar mobility report; Dec, 2020.)

Your task is to pitch to the Competition Partners a cogent and multi pronged strategy to promote adoption of EVs in Singapore

Currently, there already exists a plethora of government initiatives encouraging EV adoption, from reducing the Additional Registration Fee floor of new electric cars, to revising road tax framework for electric cars, and to establishing, under the LTA, of the National Electric Vehicle Centre. Your focus, therefore, should be to propose additional pro EV measures, especially those that would partner the government with the private sector players in EV and EV charging points manufacturing and operation. You may attack the issue from a multitude of angles, including technical innovation, regulation, cost, and consumer education, charging behaviour, mindset change, acceptance and willingness to pay. In tandem, you could also address the interactions with other government policies such as the push for Green Commutes (as part of the Singapore Green Plan 2030) and how that would impact private EV ownership.

Preliminary round

Create a compelling case with no more than 5,000 words. Where appropriate, use (info-)graphics to support your arguments. The case will be evaluated by a panel of NUS faculty judges. We look for in the proposed solutions: Ingenuity, practicality, and enforceability. And importantly, we prefer cases that include no more than two solutions but with each solution rigorously argued and well supported by research, facts and statistics. This also means that we do not prefer cases that include a multitude of solutions but are sparse on detail and depth regarding each of the solutions.