The price of oil is high, so should the government and cabinet ministers set an example in cost-cutting and use electric vehicles as their official cars? This question was posed to Investment, Trade and Industry Minister Datuk Seri Johari Abdul Ghani at the Concorde Club dialogue session at Wisma Bernama yesterday.
The MITI minister said that he and his colleagues can do so, but such a move must be supported by widespread public charging infrastructure nationwide, citing the example of petrol stations.
“We need the public infrastructure. Where are you getting the public chargers? They must be available throughout the country, just like petrol stations. Only then will people feel comfortable using EVs,” he said, reported by The Star.
“But if you do not provide the infrastructure, it will fail, even if you give a low price. It may be construed that everything is already taken care of by the government, and when they experience some problems, they will come back to the government and ask why the government allowed this. My stand on this issue actually is – let’s build the infrastructure together,” he added.
Johari lamented that charging infrastructure isn’t widespread in rural areas. “From 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025, those who brought in CBU EV cars enjoyed zero import duty, zero excise duty, and zero sales tax. That is how the government created a window for four years.
“Unfortunately, within those four years, we have not seen widely available infrastructure development, especially in rural areas, kampung areas and so on. Within this period, we have forgone about RM3.3 billion in tax revenue,” he said, adding that Malaysia is now focusing on strengthening its EV ecosystem, including encouraging CKD local assembly operations.
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