Charge+ has recently revealed its plan to establish what the company referred to as an electric vehicle (EV) charging highway to enable seamless long-distance travel for EV owners throughout Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The Singaporean charging solution provider claimed that the 5,000km network will not only be the longest of its kind in the region but could also be among the longest in the world.
According to the master plan that the company revealed at the recent Future Mobility Asia Summit in Bangkok, there will be 45 DC fast charging locations throughout the network. To make the long journey seamless, Charge+ also promises that EV owners can access the chargers at all of these locations through just one app.
The company also noted that the average distance between these charging stations will be around 120km and they can be found either directly on the highway or within 2km from the interchanges. In addition to that, some of them will be deployed at urban charging hubs that will be established in six major cities including Kuala Lumpur.
Aside from that, the DC charging stations for the Malaysian leg of the network will also be located at Yong Peng, Ayer Keroh, Simpang Ampat, Bangi, and Juru. Before you get too excited and already eager to make that long cross-country road trip with your EV, we hate to break this to you: it is going to take quite take some time before Charge+ ambitious EV charging highway becomes a reality.
The first batch of 18 charging station locations within the network – including the six Malaysian locations that we mentioned earlier – will only go online sometime in 2024. Furthermore, the rest of the charging locations will only be available by the end of 2025.
In terms of operational ownership, some of these chargers will be deployed by the company itself while there will also be chargers that are run by other charge point operators that will provide access to Charge+ users through roaming arrangements. However, the urban charging hubs such as the one planned for Kuala Lumpur will be operated directly by Charge+.
Unlike its massive operation in Singapore, Charge+’s footprint in Malaysia currently revolves around just a handful of condominiums. Nevertheless, the company has mentioned that TNB is one of its many regional partners.
Meanwhile, there have already been quite several efforts that aim to enable overland cross-country travel within Southeast Asia, mainly the Singapore-Malaysia-Thailand route. One of them is the Shell Recharge – Porsche Asia Pacific HPC EV network that was launched in early 2022 while major Malaysian charging point operators including chargEV, Gentari, and EV Connection have also begun to expand their reach into Singapore and Thailand.
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