Mr Raymond Khoo with the EVA.
Think sleek electric cars and the American Tesla models come to mind.
But there are people here slaving over a made-in-Singapore electric vehicle (EV) too.
The EVA, Singapore’s first electric car which was designed to be a taxi, took four years of toil and innovation to create.
When the prototype was launched last year, talks to commercialise the vehicle began.
It’s a dream come true for Singaporean researcher Raymond Khoo, 30, who describes the EVA as his proudest achievement.
He remembers when it existed only as a pen-drawn concept on paper in 2012.
The mechanical engineering masters graduate says: “With no automobile courses in Singapore, creating the EVA has been very difficult.
“I had to read books outside of my field and teach myself about automotive design online.
“It is simply the biggest project that I’ve ever worked on. This is our flagship product.”
There is growing global interest in EVs and a growing market led by companies like Tesla and BMW.
In Singapore, a local electric car manufacturer is currently pumping in millions to create an EV, but not for the Singapore market.
For all the hard work Mr Khoo and his team of 120 researchers put into EVA, there are still no takers – taxi companies, car manufacturers or budding entrepreneurs with the means – to put it into mass production.
This despite Singapore being touted by transport experts as the “perfect test bed” for EVs due to its small size and tech-savvy people.
Today, the EVA sits idle in the TUM Create’s Automotive Lab at the National University of Singapore’s University Town.
TUM Create is a collaborative research platform between Nanyang Technological University and Germany’s Technische Universitat Munchen, and is funded by the National Research Foundation Singapore.
Occasionally, Mr Khoo will show interested visitors or researchers the EVA and demonstrate its capabilities as an electric taxi.
Essentially, it is designed in Singapore, built in Singapore and meant for the local market.
The EVA is by no means a failed project for its creators – it is still a platform for further research and development work.
A TUM Create spokesman says: “The EVA taxi is primarily conceived as a research outcome and a platform for testing and showcasing technology and new ideas. EVA has impressed and attracted a lot of automotive interest around the world.
“It is important to understand that starting automotive manufacturing and commercialisation of an electric taxi like EVA in Singapore is a complex issue, involving a large investment with an uncertain sale volume.”
