Question 1

Green Urban Solutions and Technology Pte Ltd is a local business start-up that has chosen to focus on commercially viable sustainability solutions for urban environments. In Budget 2021, the Singapore Government had announced that petrol-driven cars would be completely phased out by 2040. New car registrations would only be for electric vehicles. The Government had also set a target of installing 60,000 charging points by the year 2030 from some 1,900 CP’s presently. These CP’s will be operated by private enterprises. GUST decided to pursue such an opportunity.

GUST plans to roll out Type 3 superchargers that can re-charge an EV from 0 to 80% in about 20 minutes. Each supercharger constitutes one CP. These chargers will be installed island-wide in clusters of 2 to 4 CP’s per location. Every such CP will require a standard-size parking lot which GUST will rent from building owners and car-park operators.

These CP’s will operate on a self-service basis over 24×7 hours. EV customers will use a mobile phone app to operate the CP and pay for the charging service. Every customer will be allowed up to 30 minutes to charge their cars at a CP. Penalties will be imposed on those who stay beyond the 30-minute charging timeslot. On a typical day, a CP can be used for up to 48 charging timeslots.

EV cars and EV chargers have very few parts and are known to be robust and reliable, requiring very low maintenance, if any. The chargers can be operated continuously over 24 hours with almost no operational impediment. It is the ideal digital solution for sustainable urban transportation and GUST hopes to be a significant player in this economic sector.

Question 2

Over the next 10 years from 2021 to 2030, GUST needs to plan out the number of charging points that it will install at various places. The number of CPs that will be viable clearly depends on the car population size and EV adoption rate. Future car population numbers are not known. However, the Land Transport Authority has provided the car population figures for the last 10 years as shown in table 2 below. The number of EV cars may be assumed to be negligible over this period.

Nevertheless, GUST hopes to be able to project future demand for EV cars based on this historical data. Clearly, the number of EV cars on the road will translate into potential demand for its electrical charging services.

• Describe four key insights disclosed by the set of car population figures shown in table 2. Your description must be supported and verified by a suitable spreadsheet model.
• GUST has been advised by its land transport consultant that the EV adoption rate from 2021 to 2030 will likely be 5%, 6%, 8% 10%, 12%, 16%, 20%, 26%, 38% and 55%, respectively. The LTA has indicated that there will be no further growth in the total car population. Instead, for the next 10 years from 2021 to 2030, the yearly car population will be stabilized at the average of the car population in the years 2010 to 2020. For urban usage, every EV car is expected to need a re-charge every 5 days. GUST is confident that it will be able to capture 20% of the market share of EV cars in Singapore.

The Project Director of GUST plans to install 20 CP’s in 2021 and will double the number of CP’s from year to year till 2030. By 2030, it will have a total of 10,240 CP’s. The company has a required return rate of 8% for all its investments and projects.

Create an NPV-based model to analyze the net present value of this venture. Hence, advise the CEO of GUST whether the Project Director’s plan is viable.

For this analysis, you may assume that all CP installations can be implemented
expeditiously at the beginning of each year and that they are operational immediately. Year 0 may be assumed to be 2020. CP’s are only installed from 2021 onwards.

• How would you determine the number of CP’s to be installed year by year from 2021 to 2030 in order to achieve the best results for GUST? Justify your method.