Gentari ICOM Square Free Charging Ends; All New Gentari Mobile App Coming Soon!

Gentari’s maiden DC Fast Charging (DCFC) facility in Sarawak state capital of Kuching, which is located at ICOM Square, has ended its free charging period. Starting today, users will need to pay to plug into this facility.

The firm established this DCFC last Sept in collaboration with Sarawak Energy Berhad (SEB), and it gave Kuching-based EV users a proper taste of DC fast charging. To date, the “Cat City” still lags behind when it comes to the number of DCFCs available.

As a refresher, Gentari ICOM Square houses two DC charging units serving three electric vehicle charging bays (EVCB) - one dispensing 180kW, and the other at 50kW.  The 180kW device is outfitted with a dual-gun serving two EVCB with split power delivery. As for the 50kW unit, it is a pretty straightforward single gun DC charging setup.

The charging rates announced for both these units starting today is RM 1.40/kWh. This rate appears similar to that levied by the nearby City One Mega Mall.

Similar to all Gentari stations, users can gain access to this charger through the Setel, JomCharge or ChargEV mobile apps. However, take note that there will be an all new Gentari app that’s set to launch tomorrow, and it will predominantly take over the Setel app’s role for EV users.

EV users can already download the Gentari mobile app on the Apple and Google app stores and sign up either via their mobile number or email address. CariCarz.com tried to sign up via mobile number, however the number was not loading when keyed in, hence our resort to using email registration instead, which was pretty easy.

At a glance, the Gentari app seems to be extremely clean and smooth to swipe through although, at the moment, users do not have any sort of access to the charging map or any of the features that would be offered.

We can however get an idea that via the app, users would be able to not only locate chargers, they’ll also be able to earn points whenever they charge their EVs. We assume this points system would work similar to the Setel module, but it’s unclear still if these points can be earned if users use either the JomCharge or ChargEV when charging at Gentari EV stations.

Other than that, the Gentari app also highlights “Home Energy Solution”, thus indicating the firm’s intent on going strong into the home EV charger space with the possibility of solar panel integration. The home charging space is currently dominated by Kineta.