SINGAPORE — By the start of 2017, 100 electric taxis will run on Singapore's roads, helping the government sort out what the country needs to do for a greener, emissions-free future.

The new fleet will be run by a new, sixth cab company here called HDT Singapore Taxi.

Local reports say the government plans to collect "real-life" data from the fleet of 100 taxis, in order to help it study whether electric vehicles can be commercially feasible in future.

This is expected to cover questions about infrastructure, such as how many charging stations are necessary across the island and where.

While HDT is a private commercial company, it did get a bit of a leg up to get up and running. According to AsiaOne, its new electric cars are considered research vehicles, and are therefore exempt from paying Singapore's notoriously heavy vehicle taxes.

The company has been running a service with 30 cars in a tie-up with Singaporean ride-sharing service Grab for the past three years. Its eventual 100 cars will be just a fraction of Singapore's overall 28,000 taxis across the existing five operators.

The BYD e6 car with ride-sharing operator Grab's logo on it. Image: HDT/Facebook

The Singapore government has shown interest in electric vehicles since at least 2009, when it set aside S$20 million (US$14.7 million) to go toward researching technology and business models around electric vehicles.

In 2011, it started a small batch of around 10 electric cars in the city, with a handful of charging stations installed. And last month, it committed to a large-scale electric car sharing programme in every public housing estate by 2020. The majority of Singaporeans live in public housing, so this is expected to cover much of the island.

HDT's fleet will run on BYD e6 cars, from Chinese auto manufacturer Build Your Dreams (BYD). The e6 model has a reported range of about 350km, and takes roughly an hour-and-a-half to be charged fully.