Zafrul: 1,500 DCFSs By 2025 Now Targeted, EV Battery Passport Mulled

The Minister of Investment, Trade, and Industry (MITI), YB Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Abdul Aziz recently took to his social media to announce that as of March 2024, there were 11,000 units of new energy vehicle (NEV) sold in Malaysia. This comprised both electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrids.

He however did not specify the actual breakdown detailing how many EVs were actually sold specifically, which would be the actual important number as the government is looking at growing adoption of which alongside the growth of public EV charging stations nationwide.

These announcements were made following the latest National Electric Vehicle Steering Committee (NEVSC) meeting which took place recently. It was also chaired by Deputy Prime Minister, YAB Datuk Sri Haji Fadillah Haji Yusof.

Tengku Zafrul also announced that the public EV charging network has grown with 268 new EV chargers. The new total now stands at 2,288 according to the number recorded on PLANMalaysia’s MEVnet.com dashboard. Of these, 503 are DC Fast Charging (DCFC) types.

The MITI premier also stated that the ministry is still sticking to its initial goal of seeing 10,000 EV Charging stations established by end of 2025. However, rather optimistically, they have also elected to raise the target of DCFCs established in the same period from 1,000  to 1,500 chargers now.

For perspective, we are still short of 7,712 public chargers, meaning 385 EV chargers need to be set-up every month for the next 20 months to attain this number. Would this be even possible given that only 268 EV chargers were set up since the start of this year?

It is also good at this juncture to highlight that all this target and commitment set by the government does not involve any financial commitment from the government. Instead, the committee HOPES that CPOs would roll out EV Chargers faster to fulfil the government goals.

Furthermore, the roll out of these EV chargers are also still dependent on other factors such as speed of licensing from the Energy Commission (ST). This still proves very slow, and newly imposed metering requirement from Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) has placed added financial burden on CPOs.

Another topic discussed by the NEVSC centred on EVs and EV battery end-of-life plans. The committee discussed implementation of EV Battery Passports, which will necessitate all EV batteries to have a unique ID so that it can be tracked and recycled as part of the circular economy.

The call for EV Battery Passport could have stemmed as an offshoot of MITI’s recent bid at urging Sime Darby Motors (SDM) to explore recycling of disposed EV batteries.

Tengku Zafrul also stressed that there are still many initiatives that can be implemented to improve the existing EV ecosystem, and the government is steadfast in progressively developing the country's EV industry and ecosystem.

Anyways the clock is ticking and the “rakyat” is watching… Let’s hope we can “really” see 10,000 public EV chargers up and running by next year.

So far, we have not heard of any “special” incentives or funding offered by the government to drive the numbers up…