Singapore’s electric vehicle charging network to grow significantly:

City-state Singapore will have 500 new charging points for electric vehicles by 2020, addressing a major barrier to the uptake of electric vehicles in the country.

SP Group, formerly Singapore Power, which operates the island’s power grid, identified “range anxiety” as a critical gap in scaling up the adoption of electric vehicles in the country, as elsewhere.

The company’s head for strategic development Goh Chee Kiong told media that the launch of a large charging network is crucial to giving EV drivers “peace of mind”.

More than 100 of the charging points will be “rapid” charging stations using direct current, allowing a full charge of an EV’s battery in just 30 minutes.

Currently, most EV charging stations available in the country take longer to charge a vehicle, and electric vehicles are still somewhat a novelty.

These 500 charging points will join the ranks of the 2,000 charging points that are being rolled out by BlueSG under an electric car sharing programme by the country’s Land Transport Authority and Economic Development Board (400 will be open to public), and the 50 charging stations local electricity retailer Red Dot Power is planning to install by end 2019.

The roughly diamond-shaped island of 720 square kilometre (278 square mile) size has long been considered an ideal candidate for electric vehicle use due to its compact size.

Singapore recently became the first Southeast Asian country to join the BreatheLife campaign, and has since 2012 adopted air quality targets based on World Health Organization Air Quality guidelines.

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SP Group to build Singapore’s largest public electric vehicle charging network