“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.”
— Masagos Zulkifli, Minister for Environment and Water Resources, in response to Elon Musk, co-founder and CEO at Tesla, which manufactures electric vehicles. [Aug 2019, Bloomberg] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-21/singapore-says-musk-s-vision-promotes-lifestyle-not-climate
According to a Bloomberg post, Musk has criticized Singapore for being slow to adopt EVs and that the government was “has been unwelcome” in a twitter post in January.
The official stance was that taking mass transit is a better climate-change solution than promoting Tesla Inc.’s electric vehicles. Nonetheless, Masagos agreed that “If there’s any country which can convert from petrol cars to 100% EVs, it will be Singapore”.
The subsequent challenge would then be to develop adequate charging stations with 85% of the population living in high-density public housing.
Perspectives from a Resident of Singapore 