The Malaysian Fire and Rescue Department (Bomba Malaysia) has prepared the new guideline for electric vehicle (EV) charging stations. The guideline has since been handed over to the Ministry of Local Government Development (KPKT) for assessment, according to its Director of Fire Safety Division, Ahmad Izram Osman.
Izram said that the guideline was drafted through collaboration with the Malaysian Institute of Architects and the local EV industry advocacy group Zero Emission Vehicle Association (ZEVA) as well as various non-governmental organisations. However, he also pointed out that the guideline Bomba Malaysia has submitted to KPKT only applies to commercial premises and not residential areas.
Meanwhile, among the topics that were covered by the guideline include the distance between the vehicle and the premise’s entrance as well as exit pathways. Bomba Malaysia has also made recommendations regarding the appropriate building level for EV charger installation.
In addition to that, the guideline also talked about the application and approval procedures for EV charger installation regardless of whether it is located inside or outside the building. Based on these remarks, it seemed that the authorities may have backtracked from their plan to prohibit EV chargers from being installed in basement parking and multi-storey buildings.
To be clear, we are not ignoring 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 throughout the world including Malaysia.
Take Suria KLCC ‘s underground car park as an example. With more than 25 chargers, the rollout by Gentari is essentially one of the largest EV deployments ever taken in Malaysia. Furthermore, EV charging stations are already available at many popular shopping malls such as 1 Utama, IOI City Mall, Sunway Pyramid, Sunway Velocity and MyTown Shopping Mall.
Even the latest EV player in the Malaysian market, Tesla has chosen the basement parking of Pavilion KL as its first Supercharger location in our market. The company certainly has no problem deploying Superchargers in underground parking throughout the world including in neighbouring Thailand and Singapore.
However, we still have to wait for further updates from KPKT for the actual confirmation though. Back in May, the Minister of Local Government Development Nga Kor Ming said that the ministerial circular for the EV charging station policy was supposed to be finalized and presented at the National Council for Local Government meeting last month.
Judging from the lack of updates from the KPKT at the moment, it is likely that the circular is not yet ready to be announced to the public.
On a related note, Izram also revealed Bomba has yet to encounter any fire incidents that are related to EVs so far. However, there have been eight reports involving hybrid vehicles this year, in addition to the massive fire at KLCC that destroyed several electric scooters last April.
[ SOURCE ]
