Petronas subsidiary Gentari launched this dedicated EV charging hub at X Park Sunway Serene in November 2022 featuring South East Asia’s very first 350 kW DC fast charger as well as a 180 kW DC charger, allowing up to 4 EVs to be charged at once, it seems only to be used as a parking lot for internal combustion engine cars.
Seen here from a posting in the Malaysian Electric Vehicle Owners Club Facebook Group is a Honda Civic and a Mercedes-Benz GLA whose owners decided to park their cars at the Gentari EV charging hub. The GLA in particular was parked in one of the 180 kW DC charger’s bays.
As a result, this Ora Good Cat owner who wanted to use the 180 kW charger at a cost of RM1 per kWh was forced to use the 350 kW charger at a higher cost of RM1.20 per kWh.
Other than an unnecessary 20% higher cost for the Ora Good Cat owner because his EV cannot take advantage of the more powerful charger, this act of either selfishness or ignorance also deprives Gentari, which is a private business investing in the business of EV charging, of potential revenue.
This act is called ICEing, where an ICE (internal combustion engine) car decides to use an EV charging bay as a parking lot. The Gentari EV charging hub is actually at a corner of the premise, located the furthest away from The Paddock F&B area, but for whatever reason these cars decided to ICE the lots anyway.
Even a traffic cone and clear marking on the parking lot that says EV Only with the icon of a charger could not discourage them. Perhaps all EV charging bays need to implement an automatic barrier like ParkEasy for these situations to be prevented.
