Monday 27 April 2015

[Today] Charging electric vehicles will place huge strain on grid

I refer to the report “Singapore’s first electric taxi ‘now road-ready’” (April 25).
Mr Yoshikazu Tanaka, chief engineer of Toyota’s hydrogen fuel-cell car Mirai, recently told reporters that electric-vehicle (EV) charging would guzzle so much energy at once, that it would defeat the purpose of EVs as an ecologically-sound form of transportation.
He said at a test-drive event for the Mirai: “If you were to charge a car in 12 minutes for a range of 500km, for example, you’re probably using up electricity required to power 1,000 houses.”
This would place a tremendous strain on our national power grid. What do the producers of the electric taxi have to say about this?
This letter first appeared as a comment on TODAYonline.