Gov’t considering imposing a levy on new EVs, putting the proceeds into a fund to build public chargers

Continuing on the topic of there not being enough public electric vehicle chargers to accommodate the ever increasing EV volume, investment, trade and industry minister Datuk Seri Johari Abdul Ghani said the government is looking into the possibility of including an additional charge on new EVs in order to build a fund specifically for public chargers, Bernama reports.

“We may impose a levy on every EV sold and channel the proceeds to a dedicated fund to build public charging stations because we cannot rely solely on vehicle manufacturers or distributors to undertake such investments,” he said in parliament.

Reiterating what he said during the Proton eMas 7 PHEV CKD line-off ceremony last week, he said the government had granted exemptions on import duty, excise duty and sales tax for completely built-up (CBU) EVs for four years and forgone RM3.3 billion in tax, hoping that would spur automakers to help develop the charging infrastucture.

However, he said the investment in public charging infrastructure fell short of expectations. “After four years, when we looked at the availability of public charging stations, the investment from EV industry players was simply not there,” he said.

“We exempted them from the taxes because we saw potential for them to build public chargers. However, today we only have slightly more than 1,000 chargers available,” he said. He also repeated the point about asking his counterpart in China on the success of EV usage in the country. “I was told that China spent billions to build chargers. But if we want the government to do that here, we don’t have the money,” he stated.

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