Imagine building cars out of a workshop the size of a three-room HDB flat. That was what Mr Clarence Tan, 28, planned to do in 2008, after he had invested S$250,000 to set up The Green Car Company (TGCC). His dream was to manufacture 2,500 two-seater, air-conditioned electric cars a year, starting from last year.
Three years on, TGCC had not made a single car. The project has since been shelved.
Mr Tan, who is now focusing on his existing robotics business, is not the only entrepreneur who had his grand electric vehicle (EV) dreams dashed: The same year that Mr Tan set up TGCC, Mr Lim Kian Wee, then 36, reportedly quit his S$200,000-a-year engineering job, liquidated his investments and took out his retirement savings to start green technology firm Ample.
Mr Lim had hoped to raise some US$40 million (S$51.7 million) in two years to develop an EV with a range of 900km per charge instead of the conventional 200km per charge and a power management system for plug-in hybrid electric cars that run on both electricity and fuel. The company wound up in November 2009.
To trailblazers like Mr Tan and Mr Lim, there is a perception that the Government could have done more to support them.
Said Mr Tan: “Government bodies want to know if your project can be patented, if it can’t, your chances of getting funding is low.”
Mr Lim died last year. His former employee, Wong Liang Tang, said: “There is the sense that the Government prefers to work with established companies, but not start-ups.”
But experts pointed out that these entrepreneurs were perhaps ahead of their time. The reality around the world is that there are still many design issues plaguing EVs which render it impractical for mass commercialisation. These issues have to be closely examined, the experts said.
Nanyang Technological University Associate Professor Michael Li said: “For all uses of electricity, there is a huge amount of loss. So power loss is a common challenge and an area for intensive research.”
He added: “Anything that the Government does should benefit everybody, not just the big players or the small players, and that means infrastructure for electric vehicles; the charging stations. If you look at some of the issues of electric vehicles, the power or the range, the Government cannot do anything about these design issues. But it can do something about infrastructure. So the Government has to put money into areas of high probability of success.”
In June, the inter-agency Electric Vehicle Taskforce launched an EV test bed to test whether these vehicles and its related technologies might be suitable for Singapore’s roads.
To be tested are the vehicles’ operability and cost, the suitability of the business model, the driving experience and barriers to adopt, and the level of infrastructure development required to meet the expected demand from EVs in the coming years.
The trial has kicked off with 15 vehicles at nine charging stations, and the taskforce - led by the Energy Market Authority and the Land Transport Authority - hopes to test 95 vehicles at 63 charging stations by the time the trial ends in 2013. So far, the participants for the test-bed programme include Daimler, Mitsubishi, Bosch, Renault and Nissan.
Global sales fall short
Worldwide, sales of EVs have fallen short of expectations.
According to a Bloomberg report in September, Nissan has delivered 12,000 of the Leaf model since its introduction in December last year - less than half of its target of 25,000 units in a year.
PSA Peugeot Citroen, which beat Renault to the market with two electric city cars last December, targeted 7,000 combined deliveries of the iOn and C-Zero models for this year. It has sold 3,000 since Jan 1.
According to Mr Tan, together with various partners, TGCC sought S$10million from the National Research Foundation (NRF) in 2009 to test-bed a battery system that can be used on various types of EVs, and to research on improving the motor drive to get more mileage of the vehicle as well as to build a lighter but stronger body for EVs.
Mr Tan claims that TGCC did not receive a response from NRF - a claim which NRF denied.
In response to Today’s queries, an NRF spokesperson reiterated that all proposals submitted under its Research, Innovation and Technology Administration (RITA) grant management system would automatically receive a response acknowledging the submission.
NRF also has a standard operating procedure in place “to explain the reasons for rejection to each and every failed applicant”, the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson added: “This is to help our proponents to improve on their research ideas so that they can re-participate in future grant calls.”
According to the spokesperson, NRF has a range of grant calls such as the Competitive Research Programme (CRP) funding scheme and the Proof-of-Concept (POC) grants.
“Proposals submitted by interested parties are evaluated by expert panels and awards are made to the best proposals,” the spokesperson said. “A successful POC demonstrates not just technical viability but also a high degree of commercial readiness to move it into the market place.”
In September last year, NRF awarded POC grants to two EV projects proposed by National University of Singapore researchers to develop a novel anode-based Li-ion battery for EV application and the fabrication of high performance Li-rechargeable batteries with superfast charge rate.
Greenlots, a charging infrastucture company, was also successful in funding under EDB’s “Quick Start” incentive scheme. The programme supports the commercialisation of clean-tech innovations in early-stage companies, both local and foreign, on condition that they locate their global headquarters and undertake technology-orientated activities in Singapore.
Still, Greenlots vice-president Khoo Lin-Zhuang told Today: “While the Government gives a lot of funding to start-ups for research, when it comes to market commercialisation, it’s very conservative.”
But National University of Singapore transport analyst Lee Der Horng pointed out: “Given the size and nature of Singapore, the motor industry has never been a focus over here, at least certainly not in the sense of manufacturing.”
The lecturer at the NUS Department of Civil Engineering added: “We are ideal for doing test-bedding.”
