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Climate change: Hong Kong government must step up efforts to develop EV charging infrastructure to meet 2050 carbon-neutral goal, panel hears

  • While the government has dangled some carrots to encourage the private sector, auto sector executives foresee bottlenecks stalling progress
  • The government should do more to subsidise the operators of charging facilities, said panellists at the Post’s Climate Change Hong Kong Summit

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Hong Kong needs to inject greater urgency into efforts to develop electric-vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure. Photo: Dickson Lee
Yujie Xue
Hong Kong needs to inject greater urgency into efforts to develop electric-vehicle (EV) infrastructure to keep up with soaring sales and meet its 2050 carbon-neutrality goal.
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While the government has dangled some carrots to encourage the private sector drive towards electrification, auto sector executives foresee bottlenecks stalling progress.

“How to cope with the slowly growing infrastructure with the fast growing sales [of electric cars] is one of the issues that we need the government to keep on top of discussing with the industry,” said Joe Lam, deputy general manager of retail services at Inchcape Hong Kong.

There are currently over 30,000 EVs in Hong Kong, roughly 3 per cent of all registered vehicles, according to the latest figures from the Hong Kong E-Vehicles Business General Association in May. By 2025, EVs are expected to account for half of all cars on the road, according to officials at the Environment Protection Department.

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The government has a crucial role to play in supporting the adoption of battery-powered cars in Hong Kong, said Lam, who was speaking as part of a panel discussion at the Post’s Climate Change Hong Kong Summit on Friday.

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“The EV adoption rate in the whole world is very highly driven by the government, or depends on the policy of individual governments. [It is especially important] for Hong Kong, because right now, our sales or percentage of EVs in the market is growing very fast,” he said.

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