> ...climate would in fact be a primary concern of Singapore. So why is it not?

Literally the second sentence in an article that was submitted:

> The city-state, which has said its efforts to cope with climate change are as crucial as military defense, has prioritized greater use of its trains and buses, Masagos Zulkifli, minister for environment and water resources, said in an interview Wednesday.

But climate change is global, not local. So it would seem that worldwide adoption of electric cars would be in Singapore's national interest, assuming they genuinely see an existential threat to Singapore from climate change.

And yet, they make statements like this which seem counterproductive. So, why?

It's in TFA. In their opinion good public transport has a much larger impact on climate change than personal cars. Which has been proven to be the case countless times.

> But climate change is global, not local.

And Singapore can't do shit to the way the rest of the world combats climate. It can have an impact within its own borders. It (correctly) identified that the public transport makes more sense in a city-state. It incentivizes public transport while de-incentivizing car ownership in general (electric or not) because there's not enough space for the supporting infrastructure.

You'd learn all of this and more by reading the article before commenting.

I would guess Singapore wants to encourage a local electric vehicle industry and will shelter it from competition in the early years.

No. Singapore is a tiny city state with a service based economy

Dyson is setting up an EV plant in Singapore.

Car in Singapore is already more expensive than a house in USA. So numbers are already limited. So emissions produced by them is not as bad as other large cities in Asia.

One more point is that majority of the cars are discarded when they finish 10 years. So newer car with better technology produce lesser emissions.

Singapore government is far sighted that's the reason they focus more on public transportation.

The cars are not really discarded after 10 years, they just wind up in Malaysia or Indonesia. That impact should be considered as well.

It is a priority because the country is threatened by rising sea level (about one third of the country is on reclaimed land).