EV Adoption In Malaysia Outgrowing Charger Deployment - Gentari Deputy CEO

According to Shah Yang Razalli, deputy CEO and chief green mobility officer of Petronas' wholly owned clean energy solutions company, Gentari, the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) in Malaysia has outpaced the country's deployment of charging infrastructure.
Shah stated that utilisation of Gentari's charging ports increased by 60% between the first and second quarters of this year, showing that the government's initial efforts to promote EV adoption are having an impact.

The Malaysian Reserve cites Datuk Zailani Hashim of the Road Transport Department Malaysia (JPJ) as saying that as of December 2022, there are more than 10,000 fully electric vehicles registered in Malaysia.

Meanwhile, the Malaysian Automotive Association (MAA) forecasts that sales of electric vehicles will increase by 43% this year, or about 4,449 vehicles.

The development of charging infrastructure is critical in this context. Earlier this year, the investment, trade, and industry ministry (MITI) stated that another 4,000 charging points would be installed by 2023, but as of July 2023, the number was just over 1,000, WapCar reported.
According to The Edge, the Gentari’s Deputy CEO admits that the infrastructure today lags behind rapid EV adoption in Malaysia. 

“The current charging infrastructure state is lagging behind adoption because the moment we put chargers, especially in well-located areas, we see utilisation growth, and what is happening is also the growth of the number of CPOs (charging point operators).

“Typically, when you add more CPOs, utilisation goes down because you’re spreading utilisation. What it means here is that you put more CPOs, there’s also more [utilisation], meaning that the growth of EVs on the road outpaces the rate of infrastructure deployment,” he added.

Gentari plans to deploy 400 charges in 2023 to achieve the Government's goals of . having 10,000 CPs by 2025. According to Shah, the company has so far deployed 170 CPs in 2023, leaving 230 more to deploy over the course of the year to reach its goal. It takes between three and nine months to get approval for a CP in the interstate area, or the highways, according to Shah.
“The shorter time is where we don’t need any local substation upgrade, but the longer end of the spectrum of nine months is when the local substation is not adequate to support direct-current fast-charging and we need to go through an application process for that as well,” he said.
In contrast, Shah stated that the build time for CPOs is only two to three weeks, and that Malaysia has no supply chain constraints because chargers are readily available and ready to deploy.

As a result, he proposed that the government and industry address the "low-hanging fruit" issue of the lengthy approval process in order to accelerate the deployment of CPs.

“For the first six to seven months, we had to go through quite a lengthy negotiation as well as approval processes... I think the effort by the government now to streamline the process shortening the period is a welcome one. We are participating actively and hope this will be able to conclude very soon and give certainty to the industry and the consumers in terms of streamlining of processes, and ensure that process is efficient,” he told The Edge.
MITI minister Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Abdul Aziz stated that the government is in the process of speeding up the process so that charge point operators (CPOs) can secure approvals for installation far more quickly than is currently the case.
Speaking at the recent Tesla Supercharger station launch in Pavilion, the Minister agreed that the primary bottleneck is the time required to deploy a charging point - red tape and bureaucracy.

He said that a series of meetings held by the newly appointed national EV steering committee (NEVSC), which was formed under the auspices of the national EV task force, is accelerating the development process to 3 months.
He went on to say that, despite the compressed timeline, there would be no compromise on safety because the government must strike the right balance between what industry wants and what regulators believe is safe for consumers.