Electromobility, please
The astronomical price of fuel should make us take a harder, more serious look at electrified vehicles
ON TOP of the awful humanitarian crisis ongoing in Ukraine because of the war with Russia, one other thing that has become blatantly obvious in the past few weeks is the heavy dependence of Western countries (and, therefore, developing countries, too) on gas and other fossil fuels in order to keep their economies running.
Combined with the complications of seemingly imminent climate change, it sometimes feels like we are all doomed to somehow succumb to Mother Earth’s revenge at one point or another. But that is all the more reason why we shouldn’t give up now. Clearly, we have no time to lose to continue weaning ourselves from fossil fuel dependence.
In the motoring realm, one of the most prominent moves is shifting the mass markets from internal combustion engine-powered vehicles to electric vehicles. And although we may not be moving forward as quickly as we really should (especially due to lack of governmental support), I must say that we have at least had small wins, even in a developing country like the Philippines.
As you may have noticed, more hybrid and electric vehicles have been trickling into our country. Toyota Motor Philippines has been making more aggressive efforts to popularize hybrid vehicles in the country, with its introduction of a string of (surprisingly) nicely priced hybrid-electric vehicles (on top of its long-known Prius model) such as its hybrid Altis back in 2020, the Camry hybrid, and the Corolla Cross hybrid. Meanwhile, Nissan Philippines has kept its promise to help democratize EVs in the Philippines by finally bringing in the awesome Nissan Leaf — the world’s first mass-market EV production vehicle. The Electric Vehicle Association of the Philippines (EVAP) has already forecast an annual growth rate of eight to 12% for EVs running on our domestic roads.
These tiny wins have actually come faster than I originally surmised — and to a modest amount of my delight. The Department of Energy (DoE) is already onto developing an electric vehicle road map that will form part of the Philippine Energy Plan. Basically, the idea is to build an entire ecosystem supportive of EVs — including charging infrastructure, waste disposal, and fiscal and non-fiscal incentives.
In the public transportation sector, there has also been an obvious rise in the availability and usage of e-tricycles, e-jeepneys and e-utility vehicles. The Department of Transportation’s Public Utility Vehicle Modernization Program has had a hand in expediting this — and I think it is another small win worth being happy about. As a matter of fact, they are not to be underestimated because it is these electric public vehicles that comprise the bulk of registered EVs running in the Philippines. So far, our EV personal vehicle market remains small — at about 1% of the total domestic EV market — and usually limited to upper-class buyers.
But hey, it’s still great to know that even high-powered luxury cars are already sold in their EV renditions here in the Philippines — we’ve seen it in the fairly recently launched Audi e-tron electric SUV (that offers about 300W/408hp of power) and in the Porsche Taycan EV, that also happens to enjoy the benefit of the country’s first ultra-fast DC charger, located at the Porsche Center Philippines along EDSA, Greenhills.
And well, at the end of the day, do our latest fuel prices per liter ever remind you of your grades from high school? Or perhaps they’ll only be reminiscent in the next price increase, maybe three weeks from now? It’s an amusing thought — but not so funny once you realize how much it now costs you to fill up your tank! So perhaps we can all agree that it’s high time for us to move ever more quickly towards embracing EV and all other renewable energy vehicle technologies. Let’s let our government know. After all, aren’t the national elections coming soon? Please vote wisely.
