The Malaysian government is aiming to have an additional 100 EV charging points along tolled highways in Malaysia by 2025, particularly along the North-South Expressway (PLUS), reported Bernama. According to Deputy Works Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Maslan, this is in consideration of the growing number of electric vehicles (EVs) on the road.
“The need for increased EV charging points is one of the new challenges in the future highway landscape, in addition to creating new concepts for R&Rs, smart highways and LED lighting”, said the Deputy Minister after visiting the traffic management centre at the Malaysian Highway Authority (LLM), accompanied by LLM director-general Sazali Harun.
Currently, there are 60 EV charging points throughout the PLUS Highway and East Coast Expressway (LPT), and are located at rest and service (R&R) areas and petrol stations. These include the Ayer Keroh R&R (northbound), Seremban R&R (northbound), and the Paka R&R (northbound), which are operated by charging point operators such as TNB Electron and Gentari.
The new target will bring the total number of EV charging points along tolled highways up to 160.
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The Malaysian government has previously set a target for a total of 10,000 EV charging points nationwide by 2025, under the Low Carbon Mobility Blueprint (LCMB) 2021-2030 plan. Of the 10,000 EV chargers, 9,000 of them will be AC chargers, while the remaining 1,000 will be DC chargers.
According to the Malaysia Electric Vehicle Charging Network dashboard (MEVnet), which was made accessible to the public over a month ago, there are a total of 1,434 EV chargers in the country thus far. Of those, 1,117 are DC fast chargers (DCFC), while the remaining 317 are AC chargers.
This essentially means we’ve only achieved 14.34% of the goal set, and still need 8,566 more EV chargers to reach the target. This also translates to the remaining number of EV chargers needed to be built in Malaysia being nearly six times the number of EV chargers we have at the moment.
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