{"id":7895,"date":"2015-05-06T10:48:19","date_gmt":"2015-05-06T02:48:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/?p=7895"},"modified":"2021-06-18T12:30:02","modified_gmt":"2021-06-18T04:30:02","slug":"electric-vehicles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/2015\/05\/electric-vehicles\/","title":{"rendered":"Plug in and drive on"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Car owners say promotion of and infrastructure for electric vehicles is insufficient<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Editors: Macau Mak, Jeffrey Loa<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Reporters: Brian Yu, Emily Man, Kelly Wong, Teenie Ho<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/126889189\" width=\"590\" height=\"331\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/111111.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-7896\" src=\"http:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/111111.png\" alt=\"111111\" width=\"350\" height=\"453\" srcset=\"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/111111.png 565w, https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/111111-232x300.png 232w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The government has waived the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.legco.gov.hk\/yr13-14\/english\/subleg\/brief\/sc100305cb1-1027-1-e.pdf\">First Registration Tax, Section 5(4) of the Motor Vehicles Ordinance<\/a>, of electric vehicles (EV) since 1994 to encourage the use of electric vehicles (EV). But as of last year, fewer than two out of 1000 cars on Hong Kong\u2019s roads run on batteries instead of petrol.<\/p>\n<p>An electric car can be recharged within an hour using a quick charger and does not emit pollutants.<\/p>\n<p>But despite being cost-efficient and eco-friendly, electric vehicles are still not popular in Hong Kong. Alex Poon Kwok-wai, an owner of an EV, believes this is mainly because of lack of quick chargers. There are three types of chargers differentiated by charging speeds, namely standard, medium, and quick.<\/p>\n<p>Poon says there are an adequate number of overall parking facilities with chargers, but not all of them are efficient.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Chart-at-3.44.37-pm.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-7897\" src=\"http:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Chart-at-3.44.37-pm-771x1024.png\" alt=\"Chart at 3.44.37 pm\" width=\"350\" height=\"465\" srcset=\"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Chart-at-3.44.37-pm-771x1024.png 771w, https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Chart-at-3.44.37-pm-226x300.png 226w, https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Chart-at-3.44.37-pm.png 816w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Price is another issue.\u00a0 In general, electric vehicles cost around twice as expensive as similar conventional cars that run on petrol.<\/p>\n<p>Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah, who chairs <a href=\"http:\/\/www.enb.gov.hk\/en\/boards_committees\/electric_vehicles\/\">the Steering Committee on the Promotion of Electric Vehicles<\/a>, says the government has been actively promoting the use of EV, but it needs to be cautious when spending public money to install chargers in private car parks.<\/p>\n<p>Tsang says the government is working on a guideline which will require private building car parks to spare 3 per cent of their parking spaces for electric cars, as well as a gross floor area incentive scheme to encourage private buildings to allocate more EV parking spaces.<\/p>\n<p>Eric Cheng Ka-wai, the professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, believes that more promotion is needed.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vehicle emissions are one of the major causes of air pollution in Hong Kong and the government has been promoting the use of electric vehicles as a way to tackle the problem. But despite its efforts, the response from drivers has been disappointing. Apart from  the relatively higher cost of electric cars, motorists tell Varsity the lack of quick chargers is one of the reasons there are so few zero-emissions cars on our roads.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7898,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,15,1788],"tags":[299,70,379,199],"class_list":["post-7895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-focus","category-multimedia","category-multimedia-may-2015","tag-cars","tag-environment","tag-green-technology","tag-pollution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7895"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7945,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7895\/revisions\/7945"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}