By Annabell Naja Tommy & Fasiha Khushiri
KUCHING: Efforts are being stepped up to achieve the government’s target of electric vehicle usage of at least 50 per cent in the civil service by the year 2025.
The Public Works Department, in this instance, is at the forefront of this drive with the first Electric Vehicle Conversion (EVC) prototype test driven on Jan 27 this year.
“The second vehicle is expected to be launched in October 2022 and will continue with more vehicles next year,” said Dr. Megat Zuhairy Megat Tajuddin, the Board of Engineers Malaysia’s registrar during his speech on IR 4.0 technologies opportunities, challenges and success stories of PWD yesterday.
“PWD Malaysia’s EVC initiative is implemented to ensure the continued use of department vehicles that are over 20 years old while also being able to save on repair and maintenance costs for the said vehicles.
“This initiative is also implemented in line with the government’s approach to achieve the target of using electric vehicles for government vehicles as much as 50 per cent by the year 2025 as recorded in the Low Carbon Mobility Blueprint under Decarbonizing Land Transportation 2021-2030.”
According to him EVC is an initiative implemented by PWD to convert the engines of departmental vehicles that are over 20 years old from Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) to Electric Motors making the vehicle an Electric Vehicle (EV).
“In addition, this initiative is also for PWD to implement the provision of electric vehicle charging infrastructure in government buildings and make PWD Malaysia’s Mechanical Services Division a recognised government electric car maintenance center,” he added.
He said although PWD Malaysia’s EVC has only been implemented for departmental vehicles, it is always ready to provide advisory and partnership services for the implementation of EVC in Sarawak.
The EVC initiative is implemented by PWD’s Electrical Engineering Branch, PWD’s Mechanical Engineering Branch and PWD Malaysia’s Center of Engineering and Technology Excellence (CREaTE) with collaborative efforts from local technology companies such as EMAR Technology Sdn. Bhd., Bateriku (M) Sdn. Bhd. and Celcom Axiata Bhd. as well as the local university, Universiti Kuala Lumpur (UniKL).
