Electric vehicles (EV) have finally started surging into Malaysia thanks to the government’s tax incentive. Many car companies have used this opportunity to bring in all their EV’s which would have been too expensive without the tax exemption. While it might be nice to have an electric car sitting at home, there still are many disadvantages of owning one in our country.
Many are aware of these challenges and still decided to buy an EV. However, due to the recent Russia-Ukraine conflict that started earlier this year, some new challenges have approached.
Electricity bills throughout the next few months are expected to increase due to the rising fuel prices. Power companies like Tenaga National Bhd (TN) are finding it hard to maintain the current price with coal prices rising. Since coal powers around half of our countries power generation, this price increase is inevitable.
We aren’t the only countries suffering from this. Our neighbouring countries have also raised tariffs by a significant amount. Singapore increased their electricity tariff by 23% in the same quarter of this year compared to the same period last year. From January to March 2022, the tariff rose by 5.6% to an average of 25.44 cents/kWh.
Thailand also increased their tariff by 4.6% in the first four months of the year to an average of 3.78 baht/kWh. Although these countries have it bad, other countries in Europe are suffering way more. Italy and Germany both increased their electricity bill prices by more than 50% in the beginning of the year alone.
As for fuel prices, RON97 petrol will be going up but RON95 and diesel are going to remain the same for now. The Malaysian government says that the RON95 price will remain at RM2.15 per litre despite the market price rising. Diesel will also stay at its RM2.35 per litre price.
With this in mind, electric cars may not be the cheaper solution in the long term after all. EV owners will feel the effect of the electricity prices and might opt to use a petrol-powered vehicle instead. You can assume that public charging stations are going to up their prices as well. Owning an EV Malaysia seems to get more and more disadvantageous as the months go by.
