Singapore to offer tax breaks, testing ground for 'green' cars
Singapore to offer tax breaks, testing ground for 'green' cars
SINGAPORE (AP): Singapore will give big tax breaks for
environmentally friendly cars and offer itself as a testing
ground for new kinds of "green" vehicles, the government said on
Wednesday.
Experimental cars powered by nonpolluting fuel cells will be
among the vehicles that will get "all the usual taxes" waived,
said Yeo Cheow Tong, Singapore's minister for communications and
information technology.
Singapore has long used huge car licensing fees -- usually
tens of thousands of dollars per car -- to avoid the pollution
and gridlock choking many other Asian urban centers.
The government will introduce new legislation "in the next few
months" to implement the tax waiver plan, Yeo said.
Singapore is also launching an international program to bring
together car makers, research institutes, fuel industry members
and other parties to make the city-state a "test bed" for
ecological transportation, Yeo said.
Vehicle maker DaimlerChrysler was expected to make an
announcement soon on a "pilot project" under the Singapore plan,
he said.
Yeo was speaking at the Global Conference on Transportation
and Technological Advancements, an industry forum held in
Singapore last Wednesday.
Singapore hopes its initiatives will bring in hybrid cars that
combine gasoline and electrical power, as well as vehicles driven
by fuel cells.
A fuel cell is an electrochemical device that combines
hydrogen fuel and oxygen from the air to produce electricity,
which can power a car.
Promoters say fuel cells create no pollution particles or
gases and emit only water as exhaust.
DaimlerChrysler's Necar 4A -- the company's latest prototype
fuel cell car -- was given its first test drive on Asian streets
on Wednesday during the Singapore conference.
Singapore is one of four areas in the world where
DaimlerChrysler is testing the viability of fuel cell technology,
said Ferdinand Panik, chief of the company's fuel cell team.
DaimlerChrysler is also testing fuel cell cars, buses and
other transportation systems in Europe, Japan and the U.S. state
of California, Panik told conference delegates on Wednesday.
Fuel cell technology is rapidly approaching commercial
viability and could change the world as much as the invention of
the microprocessor, Panik said.
However, World Bank environmental specialist Jitendra Shah
said on Wednesday that getting people in developing countries to
change their driving habits and modes of transportation could be
difficult.
"It is not appropriate to say that this was done in Los
Angeles, and hence this is going to be done in Bangkok," he said
at the conference.
"How do you get rid of an existing (vehicle) fleet in Delhi
that, on the average, is 20 years old?" he said.
"My brother owns a car that is 38 years old. How do I convince
him that he needs to upgrade his car, when the one that he has is
perfectly functional?"