For four days in November, Singapore Management University’s campus became an open-air laboratory for electric mobility with ChargedUp@SG.
Billed as “bigger and more comprehensive” than its launch edition in April, this year’s ChargedUp@SG stretched from 6 to 9 November 2025, with SMU Hall at the heart of the action and the rest of the campus pressed into duty as exhibition space, test-drive routes and a festival ground.
The event was deliberately built as a bridge: from ecosystem talk to on-the-ground adoption, from boardroom strategy to how you actually plug a van in at the end of a long delivery shift.
The ChargedUp@SG 2.0 Conference drew a regional line-up of speakers from charge-point operators, technology providers, financiers and policymakers. Names like Charge+, Huawei, PowerUp, Schneider Electric and the SMBC-Aravest Infrastructure Fund took to the stage to tackle the deceptively simple question: how do we scale EV adoption in Southeast Asia without breaking the grid or the bank?
There was plenty of talk about regulation and financing too. After all, you can design the most elegant charging solution in the world, but if the business model does not stack up for operators and landlords, it will never progress beyond a pretty slide deck.
And hovering over every panel was Singapore’s own commitment: to phase out internal-combustion engine cars by 2040 and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
From 6 to 9 November, the campus also hosted a public-facing EV showcase, with passenger and commercial EVs displayed and made available for test drives. Families, fleet buyers and the merely curious all had the chance to sit in, poke around and, crucially, drive. For many, it was their first time feeling instant torque rather than hearing an engine rev.
If the inaugural ChargedUp@SG earlier this year proved there was appetite with several thousand attendees and fully booked test-drive slots, this second edition doubled down on making EVs feel less exotic and more everyday.
Across its conference, exhibition, site tours and public showcase, ChargedUp@SG 2.0 stayed faithful to its stated ambition: to act as a catalyst, not merely a calendar entry.
It gathered the right mix of people, technologies and ideas in a single, highly walkable space, and forced them to talk, debate and occasionally disagree, all within sight of actual vehicles and chargers.
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