The Today journalist Mr Loh clarified that the S$3m initial investment outlay went towards purchasing 8 units of the Myers Motors chassis, and other expenses. The registration of the company with a S$2 paid-up capital happened earlier in the year.

There was also a follow-up article in the Straits Times by their motoring correspondent Mr Christopher Tan on 12 Jul 2008. It clarified that buyers of the first 8 units are not simply buying a “collector’s item” as previously reported in Today, but also shares in the company.

According to The Green Car Company web site,

The first vehicle will include 2% of the company share. This means the buyer will also become the investor/shareholder of the company.

The starting price will be S$1,800,000

Price: S$8800000.00

There’s some ambiguity on the prices, but these prices value the company at S$90m to S$440m. It remains to be seen if any investors will bite at such valuations.

A Facebook group has been set up for The Green Car Company Pte Ltd. You can check out some interesting photos of the Myers Motors NMG vehicle, which the SEV-1 is based on.

I’ll get in touch with the founder Mr Clarence Tan, and post any further updates here.

China have Chery.

Now, it sounds like we’re not only getting our first made-in-Singapore car, it’s an electric car to boot.

I read this article in the Today paper a couple of days ago, here is an excerpt:

IF BUDDING entrepreneur Clarence Tan gets his way, Singapore would be mass producing electric cars within two years.

Yesterday, Mr Tan announced at a press conference the setting up of The Green Car Company (TGCC) and its mission to manufacture 2,500 two-seater, air-conditioned electric cars a year, starting from 2010.

If Mr Tan’s plans bear fruit, it will be the first time Singapore has manufactured an entire car.

This is very intriguing. So I decided to find out more.

Electric cars are different from hybrid cars, which use a combination of petrol and electric engines. Instead, they are driven purely by electric motors and powered by battery packs.

This means no need to pump petrol ever again. Imagine how gleeful you’d feel every time you drive past a petrol station.

You just plug it into your regular wall socket every day and let it recharge overnight, just like how you’d recharge your mobile phone.

The new SEV-2 (Singapore Electric Vehicle 2) is based on the No More Gas (NMG) vehicle by US company Myers Motors, which in turn is based on the Corbin Sparrow. Myers Motors bought over the Corbin company in 2003.

The Achilles’ heel of all electric cars is the short range and low speed. For example, the NMG has a range of 30 to 60 miles on a single charge, and a top speed of only 75 mph (120 kmh).

This makes them suitable only in densely populated urban areas, such as Singapore.

The US Department of Transport even classifies the NMG as a motorcycle, so owners could ride them with a motorcycle license and park them in motorcycle lots.

But that won’t happen in Singapore as its 700kg weight is well over the Land Transport Authority’s limit of 400kg for a motorcycle.

I recall reading about the first Corbin Sparrow that was imported into Singapore in 2001.

Despite the owner’s best efforts, the Sparrow was registered as a car at a total cost of S$80,000.

That’s certainly a lot of money for a single-passenger, 3-wheeled vehicle.

So why would anyone pay $2.8m to $8.8m for one?

Their plan is to modify existing NMG vehicles and sell them as a “collector’s item”, to raise additional capital to put the cars into production. These production models would then sell at a more reasonable S$40,000.

However, if I were a millionaire with $2.8m to splash out on cars, I’d probably get four Lamborghini Gallardo instead.

If I were an environmentally responsible millionaire, I could get 18 Tesla Roadsters.

This is an all-electric sports car that does 0-60mph (0-96kmh) in under 4 seconds, a range of 220 miles (352km), and a top speed of 125 mph (200 kmh).

And it looks stunning too.

Lastly, Today reported that Mr Clarence Tan “started the company with an initial investment outlay of $3 million“.

A simple check at ACRA revealed that the initial start-up capital for The Green Car Company Pte Ltd is… only $2*.

I think we’ll have to wait just a while longer for a made-in-Singapore car to appear on our roads.

*[The Today journalist who wrote this article, Mr Loh Chee Kong, has clarified in an email that the $3 million figure was provided by Mr Clarence Tan, and that no checks were done due to time constraints.]

I’m now averaging 9.4km/l, up from 8km – 8.5km/l previously. This is an improvement of 10 to 17.5%.

At 2,200km per month and the current petrol price of $2.24 for 95 octane petrol, I’m saving $53 to $91 per month. Not bad!

Do you want to save money as well? Check out this article on hypermiling for better fuel economy.

Some techniques are too extreme, but I practise some of these tips every time I drive, such as avoiding unnecessary acceleration and braking.

I even tried turning off the air-con on this morning’s daily commute to the office, just to see how much difference it would make.

To my astonishment, not using the air-con has resulted in an additional 19% improvement in my fuel economy! Given Singapore’s scorching weather, this is best done on cool evenings or after a spell of rain.

Simple changes to your driving habits can yield big savings. All you need is a little more attention and care.

Go try it today!

It’s actually good news in a perverse way. I’m heartened that people are finally seeing the impact of their behaviour on the environment. I guess it’s gotta hurt before we wake up our idea.

Whenever we drive, we are using up precious resources and polluting the air. Now that petrol is so expensive, reducing the amount we use is good for both the environment and our wallets.

I really love cars and the feeling of freedom when I drive, but sad to say, it’s not environmentally sustainable.

So here are 2 gadgets I’ve installed in my car to help decrease my petrol usage:

1) GPS navigation system (Garmin)

The device at the upper left corner is a GPS navigation system by Garmin, the Nuvi 660.

I got it shipped over from USA using the vPost service, and used a free map of Singapore and Malaysia from Malsingmaps. Malsingmaps is an online community of GPS enthusiasts who have painstakingly crafted their own map of Singapore and Malaysia, and the quality is superior to many commercially available maps.

It only cost me about S$540, much cheaper than the S$680 I would have to pay for a similar unit at the shops here.

This little baby will calculate the optimal route for your trip. No more wandering around lost because you missed that one crucial turning and have no idea where to go next.

Believe me, this really saved me a lot of time and petrol.

2) Digital gauge (Scangauge II)

Now, turn your attention to the gauge at the bottom right corner.

This is the Scangauge II digital scan, which plugs directly into your car’s computer. Most modern cars after 1996 would have the appropriate plug near the steering column.

I got it for around S$300 from TheGadgetHome. Good price, great service.

You can get a lot of useful information from this. For example on my unit, I’ve configured it to show:

• LHK: instantaneous fuel consumption (litres per hundred kilometers)
• AVC: average fuel consumption (litres per hundred kilometers)
• BHP: horsepower
• KPH: current speed (kilometers per hour)

So how does this help to reduce my petrol costs?

My car doesn’t have a trip computer nor fuel consumption gauge. So to get an idea of the fuel economy, I have to calculate the distance travelled over a tank and divide it over the amount of petrol at the next top-up.

While this tells me the average fuel consumption, I have no idea what I was doing right. With Scangauge II, I get instant feedback.

Step on the throttle too hard, and the LHK shoots up. Lift off and cruise, and it drops down to zero.

You see 9999 in the photo above, that’s because the engine is left running while the car was stationary. That’s right, I was simply wasting fuel. So the right thing to do is turn the engine off.

I learn very quickly the optimal way of driving that would use the least amount of fuel.

1. Accelerate quickly and smoothly to cruising speed of 50 to 90 km/h.
2. Anticipate the traffic in front. Lift off the throttle when approaching red lights or slowing traffic.

I can even configure it to show me the cost of petrol I’m burning up. Press the pedal to the metal.. oops! There goes $0.24 down the drain!

After installing the ScangaugeII, my fuel economy has improved by over 10%. With the cost of petrol at an all-time high of over S$2 per litre, my petrol costs is about S$500 per month.

This means I’m saving about S$50 per month, and I’ll recoup my investment in half a year. Not bad.

Another fun nugget of info I got is that I rarely exceed 60bhp for the horsepower. My car’s engine is rated at a maximum of 230bhp, but I’m only using about a quarter of it.

The remaining horses are simply left unused in the stable. What a waste of petrol.

When it’s time to change the car, I’ll get a more fuel efficient model, either a petrol-electric hybrid or a diesel car.

Do check these devices out, I hope they work as well for you as they do for me.

Currently, the diesel tax is four times the annual road tax of a petrol car with an equivalent engine capacity. But, from July 1 2008, the formula is changed to $1.25 per cubic cm of the car’s engine displacement.

That works out to be $2,500 for a 2,000cc car, down from $4,856 now, or a 49% cut.

The change in the diesel tax formula is probably to pre-empt a 15% reduction in road tax come July 2008. By un-pegging the diesel tax from the road tax, the Government will have greater room to manipulate the demand for diesel passenger cars.

If the intention of the tax cut is to encourage greater use of diesel vehicles, then it obviously doesn’t go far enough. Some analysts estimated that one would need to drive 70,000km per year just to offset this tax.

The signs are that the Government is waiting for Euro V vehicles to be more widely available after 2009.

I think it’s rather unfortunate. Diesel cars have lower CO2 emissions, better acceleration, and superior fuel economy. Why wait until 2010?

If pollution is a concern, then the number of old Euro II diesel commercial goods vehicles and taxis plying Singapore’s roads should be much greater cause for concern.

Once again, as with the incentives for hybrid cars, it’s a matter of “too little, too slow”.

So do 4.5 million other Singaporeans.

The problem is that there is limited land in Singapore. So there are various measures in place to limit the number of cars on the road, such as the COE car ownership quota system and high car taxes.

The road tax is calculated based on the engine capacity of the vehicle, and designed to encourage small cars especially 1600cc and below.

I don’t quite agree with this but at least it makes sense: small-engined cars are, as a rule of thumb, more fuel-efficient than those fitted with thumping V8 powerplants.

Singapore is a city-state, so we spend most of our time in start-stop traffic. This is exactly the scenario that hybrid cars are designed for.

Hybrid cars, such as the Toyota Prius and Honda Civic Hybrid, have a conventional petrol and an electric motor. At low speeds, they are powered solely by the electric motor. The petrol engine only kicks in at higher speeds, making them eminently ideal for urban driving.

So why is Singapore discouraging the ownership of hybrid cars?

OK, first a quick review of the car tax system in Singapore:

High taxes called Additional Registration Fees (ARF) are levied on all passenger vehicles in Singapore. A portion of this ARF is refunded back to you upon de-registration before 10 years. The ARF is currently set at 110% of the Open Market Value (OMV) of the vehicle (OMV is essentially the cost of the car including freight to Singapore).

Luckily, hybrid vehicles enjoy a green rebate. According to Land Transport Authority’s One Motoring web site:

For natural-gas driven, electric or hybrid cars registered between 1 January 2006 to 31 December 2007, a rebate equivalent to 40% of the Open Market Value (OMV) can be used to offset the Additional Registration Fee (ARF) payable at registration.

So instead of 110%, hybrid cars are only levied 70% of OMV for the ARF. So far, so good.

Unfortunately, the ARF rebate I mentioned earlier (known as Preferential ARF or PARF), is calculated based on the ARF. Which means, the lower the ARF the lower the PARF rebate.

So all the green rebate does is to lower the initial purchase price. But it also results in a lower tax rebate when you de-register your car. So the nett impact is basically… not much.

Which is still better than nothing, some might argue.

Then the LTA decides to tax hybrid vehicles based on their power output, instead of the engine capacity as for their petrol counterparts.

* Effective from 1 September 2002, ** Effective from 1 September 2007 (8% reduction in road tax)

Isn’t it unnecessarily complex? It also penalises hybrid cars for having more power: Design an efficient engine that generates more power, and your reward is higher road tax.

Let’s take a look at an example, say the luxurious and (relatively) fuel-efficient Lexus RX400h.

• Engine capacity: 3311cc. 6-month road tax for petrol car of equivalent engine capacity: $1,836
• Power rating: 268bhp (200kW). 6-month road tax for hybrid RX400h: $2,975

That’s a staggering $2,278 more per year you have to pay for the privilege of driving an eco-friendly, fuel-efficient hybrid vehicle in Singapore.

Ostensibly, the reason behind the power-based calculation method was to prevent motorists from circumventing the road tax system by fitting a large electric motor to a small petrol engine. But this hasn’t been an issue yet, surely it could be swiftly dealt with when it does happen.

Instead, all it has achieved is to penalise and discourage eco-conscious buyers. It is taking 2 steps forward, and 1.5 steps back.

It’s almost as absurd as the state of North Carolina fining a motorist US$1000 for using environmentally friendly bio-diesel in his converted van.

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