There is a good reason why you cannot drive into BMW HQ in Cyberjaya and charge your BMW EV.
Recently there have been some posts by new electric car owners in Malaysia about charging stations putting a high Ringgit value to use EV chargers to get ‘juice’ for their electric cars.
Now, some room for understanding should be in place to better understand this and many more issues on electric vehicle charging that will be coming up in the coming months as Malaysians continue to get excited about electric cars and the in-adequate charging infrastructure that is already in place.
Let’s look at some scenarios. For now, not everyone is excited about electric cars or wants to get involved with electric cars.
As a business owner, the installation of an EV charger costs money. Then there are some maintenance costs, not much. For the EV driver to come and use the service, there is the TNB bill at the end of the month for the business owner. If someone is willing to sponsor the TNB bill, that is fine, but who is sponsoring the cost to buy and install the EV charger?
Next, as a building owner, like the BMW Malaysia headquarters which is located inside the Quill Building in Cyberjaya. Yes, BMW Malaysia would have paid for the EV charger and its installation as they are aggressively promoting electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles that will use this charging point for ‘juice’.
This means all their battery powered vehicles, Mini included, will need to be charged before being lent out to the ‘privileged’ media to test drive and also before being lent out to government agencies and so on to try the whole EV driving experience.
Now, this is a private building and so the building owner ‘might’ want to limit the entry of vehicles and persons with no business dealings with occupants of the building coming in to charge their EV, including models from BMW and Mini. Other EV car manufacturers who are tenants in private buildings will have the same regulations.
Yes, Quill is also a BMW and Mini dealer with a showroom in Petaling Jaya and they have complimentary EV charging there for customers. Quill in Cyberjaya is NOT a BMW sales outlet. Just the BMW corporate headquarters.
For any building owner, even existing and occupied condominium owners, the allocation of an EV charging bay is not easy as car park lots are already allocated and we already know for a fact that ALL condominiums already have a lack of parking spaces which leaves many residents to park their ‘extra’ cars outside along the street.
Brand new condominium developers and office building developers should NOW start allocating EV charging spots and have ready a reasonable payment system for EV charging. More should be done in this area right now.
