The Ministry of Local Government Development (KPKT) is in the process of finalising a circular that will set the policy for deployment of the electric vehicle (EV) charging stations in Malaysia. According to its minister Nga Kor Ming in a parliamentary written reply to Petaling Jaya’s MP, Lee Chean Chung, the circular will be presented at the National Council for Local Government (MKNT) meeting next month.
It goes without saying that the content of this upcoming circular will have a major impact on the future of EVs in Malaysia. This is because it will also include the guidelines for EV charging station deployment at all types of existing and new developments including multi-storey or high-density residential areas.
Back in March, the Department of Town and Country Planning (PLANMalaysia) said in the draft guidelines that you are not allowed to install EV charging stations in the basement parking. This restriction also applies to multi-storey buildings except on the open-air rooftop area.
Not only that, the draft guidelines also prohibit the deployment of EV chargers for individual parking lots within a stratified multi-storey residential building. Instead, EV charging stations can be built in the visitor’s car park provided that it is on the same level as the accessway for the Fire and Rescue Department (JBPM).
Based on what has been noted in the draft guidelines, it seems that these restrictions may have been driven by safety concerns from JBPM. However, if KPKT decides to retain them for the finalised policy, it may not bode well for the adoption and development of EVs in Malaysia in general.
To be clear, we are not overlooking the potential safety risks that these chargers generally possessed. However, there are already a lot of EV charging stations being deployed within basement parking and multi-storey car parks in Malaysia while restricting the deployment in high-rise residential buildings would definitely cause a major issue for EV owners that live in condominiums.
In fact, one of the largest EV charging station deployments in Malaysia took place in Suria KLCC’s underground car park by Gentari with more than 20 chargers. EV charging stations have also been deployed in other popular shopping malls such as 1 Utama, IOI City Mall, Sunway Pyramid, Sunway Velocity and MyTown Shopping Mall.
Even Tesla which is currently gearing up to officially launch its EVs in Malaysia, has no problem deploying Superchargers in underground parking throughout the world including this implementation in Thailand. We have personally visited one such Supercharger site in Singapore as well, which was located at the basement parking of the Millenia Walk shopping mall:
The Singapore government has also begun to install EV charging stations in Housing and Development Board (HDB) multi-storey car parks as part of its aim to have 12,000 charging points within HDB carparks by 2025. This is a rather vital move given that not only because the majority of Singaporeans live in HDB flats and condominiums but also the fact that the EV adoption rate in the country has been picking up with 11.8% of new car registrations in 2022 being EV.
Meanwhile, Chean Chung has said in his response to Kor Ming that even though safety and fire risks consideration is always a priority but it has to go along with the current needs and technology. Hence, the MP is asking KPKT to promptly align the JBPM guidelines to ensure that the country’s climate adaptation process is not being slowed down.
On a related note, the local EV industry advocacy group Zero Emission Vehicle Association (ZEVA) has noted that JBPM is already working with the industry to develop the definitive safety guidelines for EV charging stations. So, let’s see if this will have some impact on KPKT’s upcoming circular this coming June.
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