U-turn for Singapore car fleet after a decade of ageing

After getting progressively older in the last decade or so, Singapore's car population seems to have stopped greying, bringing relief to those who worry that old vehicles are more pollutive.

According to Land Transport Authority figures, just over half the cars here are younger than five years old now - up from less than a quarter four years ago.

The figure however, is still far from what it was in 2007, when nearly 90 percent of cars here were below five years of age.

From that year, Singapore's car population began to age year on year. By 2014, less than 24 percent of cars here were below five years old.

Nanyang Business School Adjunct Associate Professor Zafar Momin said the current age profile is normal for Singapore, where the validity of a Certificate of Entitlement (COE) - which all buyers have to bid for before owning a vehicle - is 10 years.

Dr. Momin said under steady state conditions, cars here should average between five and six years, as opposed to between eight and 10 in other developed countries.


This in turn caused a deluge of fresh COEs being made available as the COE supply is determined largely by the number of vehicles scrapped. This trend repeated itself 10 years later - because of the lifespan of each COE - and was aggravated by an oversupply of new certificates in 2008 and 2009.

The oversupply was corrected in the following years, leading to COE quotas shrinking sharply and premiums climbing. This then caused people to hold on to their cars for a longer time, leading to the car population ageing. By 2014, the average age of cars here had doubled to seven years, Dr. Momin observed. Again, he said this was atypical.

Singapore University of Social Sciences Senior Lecturer Jason Morris-Jung said that although the gains in fuel economy of newer cars tend to outweigh emissions generated from making that car, he said, "The more important number is Singapore's car population growth, which has been shrinking for the past three years. So, if the growing average age of the car population is partly a result of fewer new cars, then that is probably an overall good trend."