Letter to the Editor of SCMP - Response to an editorial on electric vehicle

 
Letter to the Editor of SCMP - Response to an editorial on electric vehicle

We greatly appreciate your support that the promotion of electric vehicle (EV) is in the right direction (SCMP’s editorial published on November 20). I am sure you would have noted that Hong Kong is assuming a proactive role in the promotion of EV. With the mass production of EV just coming on stream, it would take time for its volume, variety and availability to be on par with its gasoline counterparts. One of our strategies is to encourage car manufacturers to target Hong Kong, which we believe to have the ideal setting for the operation of electric mobility, as the showcase for their EVs.

Among the EVs already available in the market, Hong Kong is the first Asian city outside Japan for iMiEV and Tesla to be available in the retail market. Apart from saloon cars, electric motorcycles are already running on our roads. Smith commercial EVs including truck, panel van and minibus have already arrived in Hong Kong and will be out in the market very soon. The ride on electric bus has already delighted our guests at the C40 Workshop, and we expect it to be available in our market next year.

EV can only survive with the availability of charging infrastructure and we are glad that its swift development has outnumbered what you have quoted in the editorial by far – we have already over 120 charging points in place for public use and we expect hundreds more will be ready in the coming months, many of which will be in existing buildings.

After all, our objective of promoting EVs is not to shift the air pollution problem from roadside to power plants. We have thus proposed in the climate change consultation proposal, to clean up our fuel mix by greatly raise the proportion of low carbon, low pollution fuel. Change in fuel mix requires long term infrastructure planning. We look forward to support from the community for this cause which will make the use of EV even greener.

Miss Katharine Choi
Principal Assistant Secretary for the Environment