The car market may have hit the skids here, but one sector is humming along nicely. As overall passenger car sales look on track to have fallen around 32 per cent in 2022, electric vehicle (EV) registrations accelerated sharply, boosted by a growing number of available models.

While the population of passenger cars stayed largely the same last year, the number of EVs nearly doubled to 6,124 cars. Their sales ramped up as hot-selling models such as the Tesla Model Y and BYD Atto 3 went on sale here in the second half of the year.

EVs accounted for 14.9 per cent of the new car market in November (the latest month for which figures from the Land Transport Authority were available at press time), up from around one-in-10 in January, and at least one dealer is confident that they will continue their spectacular rise.

“For the rest of this year, we are expecting it will at least go up to 20 per cent,” Anthony Teo, the managing director of Vantage Automotive, the importer for BYD’s passenger cars, told The Business Times (BT).

Teo has reasons to be bullish on BYD’s prospects. The Warren Buffett-backed brand saw its sales in Singapore jump tenfold last year, largely on the popularity of the Atto 3, a family sport utility vehicle.

Vantage is broadening its all-electric lineup in Singapore with two more models due for launch in the second half of this year. The Seal is a sleek sedan with a targeted price tag of just over S$200,000 at today’s Certificate Of Entitlement (COE) premiums.

A NEWSLETTER FOR YOU

Friday, 2 pm

Lifestyle

Our picks of the latest dining, travel and leisure options to treat yourself.

Sign Up

At that price, it would undercut Tesla’s Model 3, but a five-seat hatchback called the Dolphin could do more to tempt drivers here away from combustion power. Vantage is in discussions to retail it for less than S$160,000 with COE, making it one of the cheapest electric options in the market.

It has a range of 390 kilometres and needs little more than half an hour to juice up at a Direct Current charger. Teo said Vantage wanted to put both cars on sale here sooner, but strong worldwide demand means availability is tight.

That seems to be a recurring theme in the EV story. “I would say that we sell everything we can, depending on the production allocation,” said Christophe Musy, senior vice-president, Asean and General Distributors for Stellantis, the parent company of such brands as Citroën, Peugeot and Opel, all of which have EVs on the market here.

Stiff fines in Europe for brands that fail to meet strict fleet emissions limits have left Stellantis and other car giants hoarding EV models for that market. “That explains why we sometimes struggled a little bit to get enough production for Asia,” Musy told BT.

But the floodgates have opened this year, especially for EVs aimed at mass-market buyers. At last weekend’s Singapore Motorshow, Musy launched the Citroën e-C4, a stylish electric crossover, with a price tag of S$159,999. It was one of a handful of new EVs that cost less than S$200,000, including the Kia Niro EV, Mazda’s MX-30 and two models from the Sino-British label MG.

At the pricier end of the market, Volkswagen unveiled three EVs (one of them a commercial vehicle), while Skoda previewed an electric sport utility vehicle.

But if one particular EV signals that the breed is ready for primetime in Singapore, it could well be the Hyundai Ioniq 5, not least because it is actually manufactured in the country.

At the Motorshow, Andy Kang, the vice-president of sales and innovation at the Hyundai Motor Group Innovation Centre in Jurong West, launched a special First 100 edition of the car with some features unique to the Singapore market.

He also announced that Ioniq 5s built here will come with a warranty and free servicing for 10 years, specifically to cater to the lifespan of a COE.

Kang added that Hyundai will build a version of the Ioniq 5 with less power so it can be registered with a cheaper Category A COE, instead of the Category B certificate that the car’s buyers usually need.

A target price of S$100,000 without the COE means the most affordable variant of the Ioniq 5 would join the ranks of sub-S$200,000 EVs. “It wasn’t easy, but we made it for Singapore,” Kang said.

If anything highlights the growing importance of EVs here, it is the appearance of one tailor-made for our market.