Car-lite and climate-conscious city: get electric cars to vroom us around?

Cars: the epitome of technological beauty, the symbol of travel freedom, and the bearer of social status. The same metallic body carries different meanings in different countries.

What does the car mean to a Singaporean? Specifically focusing on four-wheeled automobiles and not other vehicles, I find that driving in Singapore is rarely borne out of necessity. Here, driving choices are motivated by personal needs — convenience, safety, accessibility. Sadly, long-term societal harms of cars rarely factor into influencing one’s decision to drive.

Thus, these objects have become prominent symbols of society’s normalisation of short-termist self-gains. Now, unwilling to let go of driving habits, our society resolves the pollution of conventional vehicles by overglamorising electric vehicles.

We urgently need a new societal narrative. To restore our transportation to climate-healthy standards, we must question its ubiquitous existence. We must dismantle larger resource-intensive mindsets and systems. We must think of long-term harms first.

Singapore’s car addiction must go.

Overall car-buying trend in Singapore

But first, aren’t current policies in Singapore already curbing the car growth? Indeed, against the odds of Singapore’s expensive car ownership rules, freeze on car growth rate and an expanding public transportation infrastructure, our car population continues to rise. Some attribute this to the declining number of deregistered vehicles. Figure 1 below shows the number of vehicles by type from 2005 to 2020. Cars, which form the large majority, have displayed generally an upwards trend.

Figure 1. The number of vehicles by type from 2000 to 2020.

Source: data.gov.sg [link]

Surprisingly, even amidst the pandemic-induced economic woes and reduced travelling, data from LTA shows that the car population had risen by 2.61 percent from beginning-2020 to March 2022. Vehicle numbers climbed from 565,033 in 2020, to 579,369 in 2021, to 579,792 in March 2022. Of these, super-luxury car purchases are also increasing. According to insurance company Budget Direct Insurance, since 2008 the number of Bentley cars has risen four times, while Lamborghini, Ferrari, Aston Martin and McLaren have seen numbers multiply two to three times. Table 1 below by Channel NewsAsia (CNA) documents the total annual registration of luxury cars, showing how luxury car-buying last year was the highest in five years, at 1,143. No wonder reports show that larger and more expensive cars are populating our roads more than smaller ones.

Table 1. Total annual new registration of cars by make, where listed makes are luxury car brands.

Source: Land Transport Authority. Infographic source: CNA [link]

On why luxury car sales rose even during the pandemic, Mr Raymond Tang, a spokesman of the Singapore Vehicle Traders’ Association, said it could be because travel restrictions helped the rich’s wealth accumulate, so they channelled spending into cars instead. Or perhaps it was simply that the number of ultra-high-net-worth individuals in Singapore swelled by 10% in 2020. Still, pandemic or pre-pandemic, the trends are headed in the same direction, pointing to how the main motivating factor driving car-buying in Singapore diverges from simply cost and necessity. Other factors more likely at play are the desires to flaunt one’s social status (since cars are also prestige goods and status symbols), or simply for personal convenience and comfort.

Overall electric vehicles trend in Singapore

In a 2020 Budget speech, former finance minister Mr Heng Swee Keat announced Singapore’s plans to phase out internal combustion engines by 2040, and from 2025, there will be no new diesel car registration. These are in line with the Singapore Green Plan 2030’s goals to reduce peak land transport emissions by 80% by or around 2050, and and to achieve 75% mass public transport ridership by 2030.

Electric vehicles (EVs) naturally and automatically present themselves as the green alternative to the fuel-powered car. With no tailpipe emissions, increased energy efficiency and the potential to run on clean energy grids, EVs have the potential to reduce pollutants associated with petroleum vehicles. Recently, the Singapore government has introduced a slew of changes supporting the electric vehicle: From 2030, all newly registered vehicles are required to be clean energy models, and by that same year, the electric vehicle network will expand to 60,000 charging points, up from 1,600. Under the Enhanced Vehicular Emissions Scheme, electric car-buyers enjoy 45% rebates off the additional registration fees (ARF) tax.

Meanwhile, feeling edgy about their displacement in a world increasingly distasteful of fossil fuels, car companies are starting to pour money into the development of EVs as well. Nissan plans to invest US$17.6 billion into its electrification push, Ford is channelling US$50 billion and Volkswagen is topping the list at US$100 billion.

Heightened urgency in the international atmosphere definitely also played a role in pushing electric vehicles into the national conversation. At COP26, at least six major automakers and 30 national governments pledged to phase out sales of new gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles by 2040. Hence, these policies have delivered a greater variety of EV models for consumers, with increasingly affordable prices.

Thus, it is unsurprising that in the past two years alone, Singapore has seen the number of electric vehicles rise 20-fold and the number of new purchases jump 17 times.

What’s the big deal? Isn’t this a good thing? Evidence of a rapid transition from the fossil economy; aren’t these figures exactly what we need?

Car businesses love lavish compliments about the benefits of their technology, and indeed being cognisant of them is important. But before we become blinded by falling too deeply in love with EVs, let us first consider its steep socio-environmental costs — it will help us take the proclaimed technological marvels with a pinch of salt. Given the current EV-embracing environment, I will now focus less on comparisons with conventional vehicles, but instead on the implications of an EV-rich future.

Social and environmental disasters embedded within the electric vehicle

Metal mining

More EVs means more electric batteries (the main constituent of these vehicles), and more electric batteries means more lithium, nickel, manganese and cobalt. One car lithium-ion battery pack (of a type known as NMC532) could hold around 8 kg of lithium, 35 kg of nickel, 20 kg of manganese and 14 kg of cobalt, figures from Argonne National Laboratory show. As the world’s hunger for lithium balloons to more than 11 million units, battery demand for lithium chemicals is forecasted to rise to 700,000 metric tonnes lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) by 2025. Aggressive mining for these metals has created profound social and ecological disasters worldwide. In Tibet, toxic chemical leaks from the Ganzizhou Rongda Lithium mine caused fish and livestock to die en masse; a recurring incident of 2009, 2013 and 2016. In Chile, lithium mining destroys the Atacama salt flats, through siphoning water and drilling processes, as well as exacerbates water scarcity in the country. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which supplies around 70% of the world’s cobalt, child labour is rampant. In Russia, metallurgical waste from nickel mining polluted the river so much it turned blood red. In all these environmental damage, we must remember that there are vulnerable communities, such as the Indigenous peoples, affected by each pollutant chanelled into the atmosphere and each gram of metal dug from the ground. A clear textbook scenario of environmental injustice, ‘sustainable extraction’ feels hardly ever possible and I feel thoroughly uncomfortable at any claims of ‘sustainability’ proclaimed by car companies.

While metal recycling has been proffered as a solution, and the urgency of it glaringly obvious, the reality is that lithium recycling will not pick up pace anytime soon. As ominously suggested by current paltry rates of lithium recycling (5%), lithium battery costs have also plummeted by 98% over the past three decades, meaning that it is increasingly cheaper to extract virgin resources rather than recycle.

Prolonging our love affair with cars also means continued construction and maintenance of resource-intensive infrastructure. Petroleum-derived asphalt roads, carparks and new charging stations are just a few that will persist. Truly, are electric vehicles bellwethers of a fossil-free future? Or do they entrench us in the fossil economy instead? Roads are also invisible sources of air pollution. In particular, they emit loads of semivolatile organic compounds, which further reacts with air particles to form harmful aerosols. Especially in Singapore’s hot weather, pollutant levels could skyrocket by 300%, as compared to low temperature conditions.

Furthermore, continued road-building in land-scarce Singapore forces us to make costly trade-offs in land use. Already, 12% of Singapore’s land is used for roads; making us in the top five most road-dense countries. Yet, neither does this figure seem set to slow down: in 2020, Singapore announced building another dual four-lane flyover and widening expressways. Another new expressway, the North-South Corridor, is in the works. In our already compacted urban landscape, road expansion also means more people living closer to pollutive, noisy roads, and suffering the adverse health impacts. I have heard people downplay the risk of air pollution in Singapore, but let us remember that it is the vulnerable minority that suffer the harshest impacts: asthmatics, children, elderly with lung and heart issues, and those who work outdoors like migrant construction workers. The problematic nature of this privileged statement cannot be more obvious.

Will the air pollution be mitigated with the switch to EVs? To some extent, yes. EVs eliminate nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide present in tailpipe emissions. However, they also rank worst on ozone production, thus contributing to more ground-level ozone. Given that ground-level ozone is a significant driver of air pollution, a rising EVs trend does not bode well for our air quality. We must also not forget that while the exhaust fumes have disappeared, the very construction of each vehicle means significant emissions have been outsourced to other countries too. The invisibility of this upstream pollution in Singapore makes it all the more dangerous, as people no longer think about the profound well-to-wheel cost infused in every car.

While some argue that these roads alleviate congestion and the concomitant pollution from idling, decades of research point to the ironic phenomenon of ‘induced traffic demand’, where more cars fill up the available space whenever roads expand. For example, a 2019 study found that Norway’s highway expansions relieves congestion only in the short-term, while encouraging sprawled development and traffic growth in the long-term. This could be the fate for Singapore, too. Additional emissions from increased traffic thus outweighed any benefits from less engines idling. Hence, when do the limits of our ecological space become considered, and when does constant road expansion end?

Since cars are meant to speed up travel, any unexpected hindrance to that goal often ends up ugly, displaying the worst side of human nature through road rage. Road rage cases range from violent assaults — a Bentley car driver threatening to run down a security officer, a driver who intentionally rammed into a Traffic Police Officer — to verbal abuses to intense honking. Of course, cases of human kindness in driving still do occur sporadically, but they make up only a handful (in fact so rare are they that they make news). Ask any school security guard who meets drivers on a daily basis and they will attest to that, too. Elsewhere in the US, researchers found that a shocking 80% of drivers had engaged in significant aggression at least once in the past year, and that nearly eight million took it to the extreme, such as purposely ramming into another vehicle. With mindsets still fixated upon getting from point A to B as fast as possible, a revised fleet of fancy electric vehicles, therefore, will not change obnoxious behavioural trends.

To what extent can EVs provide for a clean energy future? Clearly, for all their benefits, our pernicious overreliance on cars nullifies them. We should be uncomfortable seeing the ubiquity of private vehicles dominating our roads, and question the general nonchalant attitude towards owning and driving a car.

Effectiveness of current policies

Let us examine present efforts in reducing car use, and how effective they have been. I find that government policies abound in promoting an EV-switch, and to a smaller extent, disincentivising car use. There is also a gap in ground-level conversations about attitudes towards cars (short-termist mindsets, pollution, necessity).

Singapore’s policies to deter car ownership date back to 1972, when the country rolled out the Additional Registration Fee (ARF) system, a tax imposed on the registration of a vehicle. Indeed, higher pricing fixes economic inefficiencies created by mispricing, and may even represent the social costs of pollution from manufacturing. Since 1990, Singapore has also implemented the Vehicle Quota System (VQS) to regulate vehicle numbers, and central to that system is the Certificate of Entitlement (COE) which accords drivers the right to vehicle ownership for ten years. In the most recent bidding exercise, COE premiums for cars were between $71,556 and $99,999 — far higher than the cost of the car itself. Sky-high COE prices also reflect how car demand remained robust even during the pandemic.

To reduce the frequency of driving, in 1998 Singapore introduced the Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) system, a form of congestion pricing. Made up of a network of 93 gantries situated on arterial routes, expressways and the central business district (CBD), the ERP levies road charges on passing vehicles with costs ranging from S$0.50 to S$5.00. Increased ERP rates have been credited for easing congestion as well.

To some extent, both the VQS and the ERP have effectively deterred car ownership and lowered traffic densities at peak hours. Authorities have set car growth rates to 0% through the VQS. Traffic volume into the CBD declined 10 to 15% during ERP operating hours. But these policies also have perverse effects of favouring the rich, and cast aside those who need the car but cannot afford it.

Of course, economic disincentives can also be progressively crafted. I recognise the progressive bent in the luxury car tax, recently introduced in Budget 2022. Under the new ARF tier, cars with an open market value (OMV) exceeding S$80,000 must pay 220% of the OMV for the portion exceeding S$80,000. This helps to increase government revenues without levying cost burdens on the general population.

Another progressive policy introduced is the Revised Off-Peak Car Scheme (ROPS), which offers existing car owners lowered registration fees and road taxes, in exchange for restricted driving timings, especially during peak hours. By lowering the barrier-to-entry, more people can own cars without contributing to traffic congestion, supporting the lower-income with more affordable prices.

Aside, from the environmental perspective, the frequent turnover of cars that these policies encourage are not necessarily better. While cleaner, more energy efficient technologies run on the road, the vast energy accrued to build the car may outweigh energy saved in switching to EVs (it depends on the mileage; generally, the lower the mileage, the more meaningful it is to keep the old car).

Excessive road pricing and the reduced crowds created can also hurt merchants’ businesses. Altogether, a deterrence approach primarily driven by dollars and cents is prone to creating inequality. For a more comprehensive approach to tackle car addiction, we need non-economic solutions as well. Now, let us look at car-lite campaigns and private-led initiatives.

The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) organises monthly Car-Free Sundays, a community initiative occurring on the last Sunday of every month. Instead of traffic, roads are used for a series of outdoor activities ranging from yoga to pebble-painting for kids. The event has generally received positive feedback from the public, as seen in the survey below (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Responses to the survey question, ‘How would you rate Car-Free Sundays thus far?’

Source: Goh, 2017. [link]

While the event attracted more car owners than non-drivers, possibly signalling an increasing interest in the car-free concept, the event also ironically generated more personal car trips to the event. This not only negates the intended benefits of avoided driving but also highlights a lack of true buy-in into the ideology.

There are also plenty of private-led initiatives, which aim to provide market solutions through inventing technologies, novel ridership concepts and improved supply chain connections. Car-sharing firms have reported spikes in usership recently, boosting their revenues. Last year, one firm had 30,000 active users, a steep hike from 7,000 a year ago. While on one hand, increasing interest in car-sharing is a reason to cheer; on the other hand this is a boost to profit-making business models that is fundamentally predicated upon users driving more, not less; it still asks for car fleets to expand, not shrink. Consumers remain motivated by cost, not environmental ideologies. A business strategy that is conflictual with the aspirations of the climate movement at its core, it is limited in its environmental effectiveness.

Other industry-led projects involve the production of low-carbon materials, or projects with zero material waste. For example, car manufacturer BMW Group announced that from 2026, low-carbon steel will be used in its cars. Undoubtedly, sustainable material sourcing is essential for realising a circular economy. Nonetheless, while sustainable material procurement is important, even its endless demand inevitably means other trade-offs, as less materials are available for other necessities. To attain the car-lite vision in the truest sense, market-based solutions are not enough.

While the above policies have controlled congestion and promoted sustainability to some extent, they have only very weakly cultivated interest in broader climate action. Validating the cost-first mentality, for one, does nothing to create a society motivated by larger environmental and social concerns, and thus fails to invigorate the climate movement. Instead — like any environmental policy should — the car-lite movement should be grounded in inspiring climate consciousness and rejecting consumerism; these then galvanize more individual and collective climate action. Thus, I argue that we urgently need a cultural change in our attitudes towards cars. We need a new societal narrative on driving habits which embodies degrowth, the spirit of the climate movement.

Shifting societal narratives : a question of necessity

How do we change something as abstract as a societal narrative? To challenge the necessity of cars in our city-state, let us first examine the alleged benefits of safety, convenience and overall improved well-being, by studying similar situations overseas.

The belief that private transportation is safer than public transport is a common misconception worldwide. However, the truth cannot be further from this. Users of public transit are far less likely to suffer traffic casualties, compared to their counterparts taking private transport, as shown in the figure below.

Figure 3. Transport fatalities across different types of transport.

Source: Litman & Fitzroy, 2012. Based on FHWA and APTA data. [link]

“It takes just a modest increase in public transit use to result in a dramatic decrease in traffic fatalities,” said Paul Skoutelas, president and CEO of American Public Transportation Network (APTA), in a 2018 Bloomberg article.

Neither do cars provide substantial salubrious effects on well-being. Beijing researchers found that car ownership does not improve life satisfaction; on the contrary, infrequent car use is correlated with higher travel and life satisfaction as users avoid the mental exhaustion and stress that come with driving. Furthermore, contrary to how our culture equates travel time to wasted time, time spent on work commute in fact contributes to overall happiness.

Below is a graph from a study based in Xi’an depicting how commute mode relates to happiness levels. Satisfaction offered by cars was outcompeted by shuttle buses, bicycles, walking and the subway.

Figure 4. Results of a study on the relationship between commute mode and reported happiness levels. People relying on employer shuttle buses report highest commute happiness, followed by those who use private bikes, and then those who walk.

Source: Zhu & Fan, 2018. [link]

Even environmentally-conscious driving has been linked to negative effects on mood, because of the additional pressure needed to keep up with the environmentally-conscious practices. Hence, it is fallacious to think that driving offers us better mental well-being.

Perhaps the purpose of cars go beyond its utilitarian functions, too. In a comparative study of Singapore and London, it found that in Singapore, cars served more than mere utilitarian purposes — it was socially desirable as a symbol of ‘success’. In contrast, Londoners viewed cars as a necessity due to the lack of available alternatives. Indeed, the attention given to conspicuous consumption is not unique to Singapore. A study in India found that while income and household demographics drive car ownership, household perceptions of social status was a key variable as well. But why do we feel good showing off an object tainted with environmental injustice? We need to call it for what it is and change our mindsets towards driving.

After all, the nation’s public transportation infrastructure is increasingly extensive (in fact, one of the world’s highest already), and inclusive of families, the elderly, the disabled and those with ‘invisible medical conditions’. Pavements are safe to walk alone at night. In a land-constrained island where land reclamation is at its utmost limit, constant driving should be less socially acceptable, with the pollution budget reserved for unique circumstances.

Reimagining a new Singapore, through the lens of degrowth

What is the overall vision for our decarbonisation shift: a dubious ‘green capitalism’, or one based on degrowth and climate consciousness? It will be disastrous to jump on the bandwagon of EVs without recognising the pollution and social costs embedded within the car-addicted system.

However much price-sensitive and pragmatic Singaporeans may be, national conversations shape social environments, which influence behaviours. Singapore does have a few ambitious plans for car-lite urban mobility, such as the Land Transport Master Plan 2040 which aims to make Singapore a ‘45-minute city’. Central to this Master Plan is the Avoid-Shift-Improve (ASI) framework, which advocates for a decarbonisation of transport and should continue to be promoted. The Walk-Cycle-Ride SG concept aims to make car-free travel journeys efficient and smooth.

Unfortunately, these initiatives are under-optimised. More grand plans will have no effect on the affluent who are prolonging car growth and usage in Singapore. They prefer to glorify technology as the potential cure-all to our environmental issues: no wonder conversations encircling around artificial intelligence predictive transport and autonomous vehicles pay little attention to their socio-environmental impacts. Unsurprisingly, too, for all the car-lite city planning ongoing, road networks are not seeing any signs of downsizing in the near future. While the new North-South Corridor will feature bus lanes, cycling trunk routes and pedestrian paths, it does not challenge the present road density in our city; simply decorates it with more ‘inclusive’ roads. I find it somewhat absurd: how does building more roads promote a car-lite society?

Instead of shying away from challenging the status quo, we need vibrant, honest and transparent discussions questioning the long-term effectiveness of our modern developmental trajectory. Perhaps we should also explore a degrowth framework for cars in Singapore (and eventually expand to discussions on degrowth for climate action). Degrowth refers to downscaling production and consumption to sustainable levels, which is the only way forward for social equity and environmental protection. It is especially the responsibility of Global North countries, who possess the resources to lead the economic transition. At present, conversations surrounding such a concept, however, have barely begun; with ideas on redefining pragmatism and growth appearing only in environmental activist spaces. We need to ask difficult questions, like: how can urban infrastructure be redesigned? How can public spaces be better utilised? How has Singapore urban sprawl infiltrated into other countries, by expending their resources?

These conversations should feature in especially the middle- and high-income groups of Singaporeans — social comparisons of car value by the poor are unlikely to be of matter to them. Also, these discussions should occur at all levels, from parliamentary debates to dinnertable conversations. Once these conversations become normalised, we will see change in our social environments, through different levels of civil society and facets of policymaking.

Conclusion

Cars in Singapore are painfully conspicuous symbols of the many people’s unrelenting priority for satiating personal desires and disregarding pernicious social harms. This article does not aim to demonise private vehicles. I do not deny that EVs have a role in transiting away from the fossil economy. But so precious are all of our resources that we must use them judiciously, that is, only out of necessity.

Singaporeans’ driving habits must change. Data shows that societies can be happier and healthier without cars, yet self-interested gains dominate mindsets, and habits are difficult to let go. Today, car populations are increasing, road networks are expanding and car perceptions are not changing. A more equitable society is not when the poor get cars, it is when the rich take public transport with the poor.