Community can help our drivers switch on to the electric dream
I refer to your editorial ('Electric vehicle dream still stuck in first gear', November 20).
Hong Kong is assuming a proactive role in the promotion of electric vehicles. Their mass production is coming on stream, but it will take time for their volume, variety and availability to be on a par with that of their petrol counterparts.
One of our strategies is to encourage car manufacturers to target Hong Kong, which we believe is the ideal setting for the operation of electric mobility and which they can use to showcase their electric models. Hong Kong is the first Asian city outside Japan where Mitsubishi i-MiEV and Toyota Tesla electric cars are available on the retail market. Apart from saloon cars, electric motorcycles now run on our roads.
Smith commercial electric vehicles, including trucks, panel vans and minibuses, are here already and will be on the market very soon. The ride on an electric bus delighted our guests attending the C40 climate-change workshop in Hong Kong and we expect it to be available next year. You also refer to only 28 recharging points; electric vehicles can survive only with the availability of a charging infrastructure and there has been a swift development. Yet in fact we have already more than 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 in promoting electric vehicles is not to shift the air pollution problem from roadside to power plants. We have, therefore, proposed in the climate change consultation proposal to clean up our fuel mix by greatly increasing the proportion of low-carbon, low-pollution fuel. A 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 electric vehicles even greener.
Katharine Choi, principal assistant secretary for the environment
