Hong Kong is the perfect city for electric vehicles
While electric vehicles are helping slash roadside pollution, they still only make up less than 2 per cent of private cars in Hong Kong. The growth of EVs has been increasing recently, although February’s budget will unfortunately put improvements on hold. Just look at what happened in Denmark, when the total tax exemption for EVs was scrapped at the end of 2015; sales of EVs are near zero now.
What drives so many people to spread falsified and biased information against EVs? The main reason is clearly that EVs are a threat to the established industries for fossil fuel consumption, as well as fossil fuel vehicle sales. A lot of money, but also jobs, are at stake here, so the concerted effort to slow the transition from fossil fuel combustion cars to zero-emission cars is understandable. It is, however, an essential change to remove these portable points of pollution. We owe that to ourselves, and even more to future generations.
Hong Kong is a near perfect market for EVs. No distance is more than 100km, so even the shortest-range EVs are useful. There is a lack of a charging infrastructure. We need a significant investment in more charging stations in public, semi-public and private car parks. And the electric grid must be updated as well, to accommodate the shift from fossil to electric. Update the charging infrastructure, and the market will be perfect for EVs in Hong Kong.
With the last cramped movements of fossil fuel supporters still being brought forward in various media, we must look into the reasons why these continued biased and even false statements keep occurring – follow the money. The money is as dirty as the roadside pollution.
Core Lohse, Ma On Shan
