Rommel Juan believes that electric vehicles will play a crucial role in the Philippine mass transportation system in the coming years.
Juan, the president of the Electric Vehicle Association of the Philippines, says this will be possible, if the country follows the lead of China or California.
He says there is a lot to learn from China and California, two areas with thriving e-vehicle industries.
“China has transformed itself into a global juggernaut in the EV industry, surpassing the USA as the world’s largest manufacturer and market for EVs,” he says.
Juan says in 2015 alone, China sold 180,000 electric cars, or nearly 300-percent more than in 2014 and 20 times more than in 2013.
Electric cars in China represented more than half of the total vehicles sold in the Philippines in 2015, he says.
Juan says China followed the lead of California and “in some instances, even added some extras.”
He says in 2014, the China Automotive Technology Research Center invited California auto regulators to share their success secrets. They then dispatched Chinese experts to California to observe and learn more.
Juan says Chinese experts learned that in California, EV automakers are required to produce EVs at an escalating percentage increase year by year.
“Simultaneously, the State built a synthetic market that allowed EV makers to buy and sell EV credits. They also invested in public charging stations and gave financial incentives not only to the manufacturers but to consumers as well. Today, California accounts for about half of the EV sales in the USA,” says Juan.
He says China was quick to implement what they learned in California. Policy makers adopted a
California-style EV mandate and jumpstarted the demand through purchases of government vehicle fleets.
Buyers were given as much as $14,000 subsidy per EV purchased and many cities offered reduced parking fees and granted access to bus and high occupancy vehicle lanes. Beijing also decreed that 30 percent of municipal vehicles should be electric vehicles.
Juan says tin some instances, China has gone even further than California. “They even gave reduced license plate rates. In Shanghai, it costs more than $18,000 to get a license plate. In Beijing, it is very difficult to get one and only one out of 200 applicants [half of 1 percent] gets a license plate,” he says.
Beijing, however, allotted 30,000 free license plates for EVs in 2015.
Juan says the Philippines should introduce similar EV policies and incentives to support the country’s fledgling EV industry.
“We must look at the successful EV policies and both fiscal and non-fiscal incentives that have worked for China and California and we must emulate those that are applicable to us and we can afford,” he says.
He says EVs offer a cleaner and more economical alternative to the country’s ailing, dilapidated public transport vehicles. “We expect EVs to be here to stay in various forms and they will be essential to the modernization of the mass transport system in the Philippines,” he says.