Ravi Chandran
At 1.68% p.a. – the industry’s lowest – the DBS Green Car Loan is applicable to all electric and hybrid cars
- Bank is also Tesla’s preferred green car loan financing partner in Singapore
DBS announced on 15 February that it is launching Singapore’s first green car loan, the DBS Green Car Loan, to encourage car owners in Singapore to reduce their carbon footprint.
Available from 1 March 2021, the DBS Green Car Loan provides a 1.68% p.a car loan to all customers purchasing new and used electric and hybrid vehicles. The rate is currently the lowest in the industry.
As part of the DBS Green Car Loan package, the bank will donate a tree planting towards NParks’ “OneMillionTrees” movement for each customer who takes up the loan. The bank is also Tesla’s preferred financing partner in Singapore and the preferential rate of 1.68% p.a. is already available to Tesla car buyers.
Said Jeremy Soo, Head of Consumer Banking Group (Singapore) at DBS Bank, “There are some 43,000 electric and hybrid cars registered in Singapore today, comprising just 6.8% of the car population here. In Norway, the global leader in electric car market share, electric cars make up 54%. There is clearly much room for growth and we hope the introduction of Singapore’s first green car loan will help alleviate affordability concerns and be the tipping point for car buyers including electric or hybrid vehicles in their consideration set.”
“Across the organisation, we’ve been single-mindedly pursuing our sustainability agenda – where we hope not just to lead by example but also make it easy for our stakeholders, customers and communities to participate in sustainable development together. The DBS Green Car Loan is an example of our efforts to incentivise adoption of green practices and carbon footprint reduction.”
Based on a March 2020 report done by DBS and the Impact Institute, “Impact assessment of lending to the automotive industry”, lending to the electric vehicle (EV) instead of combustion engine vehicle (CEV) sector has lower environmental and social costs of approximately 40% and 16% respectively. The study shows that “when considering the various effects, the transition from CEVs to EVs can result in a strong improvement of the environmental impact”.
The DBS Green Car Loan is also in in line with the Singapore government’s announced initiatives in 2020 to support their target of replacing Internal Combustion Engine vehicles by 2040.
This includes expanding EV charging infrastructure significantly to 28,000 by 2030, and an early-adoption incentive scheme for EV buyers from 2021 to 2023 which will offer rebates capped at SGD 20,000 per vehicle. Interested parties can email their enquiries about the DBS Green Car Loan here, before its launch on 1 March 2021.
The DBS Green Car Loan is the latest in a series of initiatives undertaken as part of DBS’ commitment to sustainable development. The bank partnered BlueSG, Singapore’s first 24/7 electric car sharing service, to encourage customers to take an environmentally-friendly approach with their rides.
Last year, DBS/POSB cardholders accumulated over 1,360 tons in carbon emissions savings while clocking more than 18 million kilometres on the road. In early February 2021, DBS also announced that it had raised its sustainable finance target to SGD 50 billion by 2024, accelerating its sustainability agenda in helping customers incorporate sustainable business practices into their overall business strategy.
This year, DBS was the sole company in ASEAN in the top global quartile of Bloomberg’s Gender-Equality Index. DBS was also the first Asian bank and Singapore company to join global renewable energy initiative RE100 in 2017.
Tesla, Inc. is an American electric vehicle and clean energy company based in Palo Alto, California. Tesla’s current products include electric cars, battery energy storage from home to grid scale, solar panels and solar roof tiles, as well as other related products and services. Tesla is ranked as the world’s best-selling plug-in and battery electric passenger car manufacturer, with a market share of 16% of the plug-in segment and 23% of the battery electric segment 2020 sales.
In 2018, Elon Reeve Musk FRS co-founder, CEO, and product architect of Tesla said in a tweet that the Singapore government is not supportive of electric vehicles. In a subsequent interview in 2019 with Bloomberg, then-Minister for Environment and Water Resources Masagos Zulkifli shot back at Musk’s comments and asserted that his fancy Tesla cars are just “lifestyle” assets and not so much a solution to climate change.
“What Elon Musk wants to produce is a lifestyle. We are not interested in a lifestyle. We are interested in proper solutions that will address climate problems,” Minister Masagos said.
According to answers on popular forum website Quora, user and engineer Philip Remaker said there aren’t any Tesla cars in Singapore as, “The regulatory authorities of Singapore do not approve of Tesla’s electric cars”.
He added, “Tesla pulled out of Singapore in 2011 when the Singapore Economic Development Board ruled the Tesla Roadster ineligible for tax breaks for “technical reasons,” rendering it uncompetitive in the Singapore market”.
Tesla cars are known because they run on sustainable, clean energy sources. Their all-electric vehicles are charged very quickly by ‘Superchargers’.
But he expressed the views that Tesla’s ‘Superchargers’ could pose a problem for Singapore.
“Just choosing a parking spot is already problematic,” Masagos told Bloomberg.
“And now you want to say who gets the charging point. We do not have the solution yet.”
In Budget 2021, the Government promised to accelerate the development of charging infrastructure to better support the growth of electric vehicles in the next ten years and to deploy 60,000 charging points at public carparks and private premises by 2030.
