ZEVA Voices Feedback Regarding Parking Space Planning and Draft Fire Safety Guidelines!

CariCarz recently managed to get a wind of the feedback from Zero Emission Vehicle Association (ZEVA) directed to YB Tuan Nga Kor Ming, Minister of Local Government Development under the Ministry of Local Government Development (KPKT) with regards to the Draft Procedure for Application and Approval of Electric Vehicle (EV) Charging Station Development by Local Authorities, Draft Guidelines for Electric Vehicle (EV) Parking Space Planning and Draft Fire Safety Guidelines for the Installation of Electric Vehicle Charging Stations on premises.

ZEVA first and foremost is a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) which has been championing the low-carbon transportation sector. In a recently concluded stakeholders engagement session with KPKT and all the related agencies, ZEVA and several stakeholders managed to voice out their feedback on the above three drafts.

ZEVA’s tabled several feedback towards the proposed guidelines covering the setup of both indoor and outdoor EV charging facilities as per the draft guidelines proposed by all the relevant agencies with regards to safety guidelines.

INDOOR

Only AC Chargers Allowed : More and more EV owners are demanding DC chargers in mall basements for a quick charge-up while shopping. At the moment CPO’s like Gentari, ChargEV, ChargeSini and more have deployed several chargers at basement parking in malls such as KLCC and MyTown. This guideline would most likely halt all future deployment in face of uncertainty and indirectly result in a rise in the buildings insurance premium.

EV Chargers Only In B1, L1 and L2 Plus Must Be 12 Metre From Entrance/Exit and Parking Bay Must Have 2.5 Metre Separation On Both Sides :  More than 80% EV owner living in highrise building would prefer to have their own private charging bay at their parking lot for the convenience of overnight charging. By having a 12 metre restriction from entrance or exit and only specific floors most buildings without outdoor open charging space would be limited to only having around 9 EV charging bays. This would drastically affect the uptake on EV as data collected by ZEVA shows more than 100 potential EV owners putting their shift to EV on hold to evaluate the outcome of this matter.

As more and more vehicle segments shift to EV especially in the higher end luxury category, the request to install private EV chargers are on the rise as around 76% of urbanites in Kuala Lumpur reside in high rise condominiums of which 40% are of the T20 income bracket. To combat this, these EV owners would have to opt to plug in to public chargers at offices. As the EV ownership volume grows this would put high strain on the nation's electricity grid during peak hours which can be resolved easily with off-peak charging at their private parking bays during the night.

EV Parking Bay Need To Be 3 Metres Wide : With regards to this, the government agencies would face problems in dealing with existing parking bays in high rise buildings as all parking bays are already defined and gazetted to individual housing units following the 2.5 Metre standards, increasing would require space the building do not have.

Isolation Wall : Authorities are also calling for EV charging bays to be boxed up either by means of dry or wet wall and roller shutter to ease isolation of EV fires should it occur. However, according to ZEVA, this would burden the CPOs with an additional cost of RM35,000 to RM45,000 for a 3 parking bay setup. This is an additional cost of up to 300% which would result in CPOs abandoning altogether the idea of indoor charging facilities and indirectly reduce the EV uptake amongst members of the public.

Fire Blanket and Emergency Start/Stop Switch : ZEVA and its members agree to these requirements as they find it sufficient enough to mitigate any EV fire risk and are proposing both these solutions fully implemented by 2025 for the purpose of local data collection as more charging points and EV adoption take place. ZEVA also calls for all EV chargers to have proper international safety requirements such as International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC)

OUTDOOR

45 Metre From Fire Hydrant : With regards to this, ZEVA pointed out that most public EV charging bays including the ones in highway R&R’s are set up based on approval from the land owners (PLUS, City Council and etc). Not all these charging bays have any existing fire hydrant close by therefore to adhere to this requirement CPOs would have to invest more funds to construct new fire hydrants.

Furthermore according to ZEVA, most EV charger installation in neighbouring cities with high rises such as Singapore and Hong Kong are predominantly done indoors (80%) to maximise utilisation of space and convenience. By having an extremely strict guideline should it be implemented, Malaysia risks to send an impression internationally that the country is not fully prepared to embrace EV adoption, let alone investments in EV manufacturing that the Prime Minister has been vocal about lately.

One suggestion pointed out by ZEVA was the suggestion during a recent meeting with PlanMalaysia, whereby a member called for the allowance of the installation of AC chargers (low-speed and up to 22kW capacity) without requiring local authority approval and exemption from fire safety guidelines. This will surely ramp-up the development of public AC chargers to achieve the nation's targeted 9,000 units by 2025.

ZEVA as a NGO also called for proper benchmarking visits to neighbouring countries to experience first hand the public EV charging facilities set up, ZEVA and its members were also offering to sponsor the cost of transportation and accommodation of KPKT officers should the agency not have any budget for this benchmarking exercise.