The future for electric cars is coming, and this will be discussed at the 1st Philippine Electric Vehicle Summit on Nov.23-24 in Meralco Multipurpose Hall in Pasig City. This will be another help to lessen the pollution in our country. I hope they can include Segway vehicles. More details are provide below in their press release.
Press Release - For the first time ever, the various stakeholders in the electric vehicle industry in the Philippines will hold the 1st Philippine Electric Vehicle Summit to assess the country’s EV industry, the consumers’ readiness to adopt the EV technology and see how to grow the domestic EV industry. The summit is slated on November 23-24, 2010 at the Meralco Multipurpose Hall in Pasig City.
Raffy Villarreal, president of the Motor Vehicle Parts Manufacturers Association of the Philippines, said that the summit is necessary at this time, considering that international carmakers foresee that EVs and other “green” cars would account for around 5% of the world car market in five years’ time. “We need to look back and see how far we have gone, what the challenges are at the moment and what needs to be done to take the domestic EV industry to the next level”, he adds.
The summit is organized by MVPMAP, World Wide Fund for Nature Save the Air Partnership for Clean Air, Electric Vehicle Association of the Philippines and the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities in cooperation with Meralco, DOTC and Motolite. It will have for its theme “The Road Forward for the Electric Vehicle Industry in the Philippines”.
Ferdinand Raquelsantos, president of PhUV Inc., the business arm of MVPMAP and the local assembler of the electric jeepneys, points out that the summit theme says it all. “The summit expects to be able to formulate a road map for the EV industry for at least the next five years. We have to be ready with the solutions to overcome the current technical hurdles and with the needed infrastructure to enable us to grow the domestic EV market.”
“International carmakers also predict the international EV industry sales to grow by about 1% per year, thus by 2020, it is expected to account for about 10% of new car sales in the world market. The Philippines must be able to partake of a slice of this huge pie. The expected entry of Meralco into the picture through its subsidiary, Meralco Energy Inc., bodes well for the domestic EV industry as we can now expect the facilitation of the much-needed infrastructure to increase the mileage of the EVs”, he adds.
MVPMAP and PhUV Inc. have pioneered the EV industry in the Philippines by locally designing, fabricating, assembling and actually putting on the road the eJeepneys. It is the first EV to ever be granted the orange-colored license plate by the Land Transportation Office under the new category “Low Speed Vehicle or LSV”.
Today, a fleet of eJeepneys ply the Makati Green Routes under iCSC’s Climate friendly Cities Program, transporting office workers for free in Makati City, the country’s financial district, through the Legazpi and Salcedo Village routes. This makes the eJeepney probably the first EV to be used for mass transport application not only in the Philippines but in Southeast Asia as well.
Raquel Santos explains that in the last three years that PhUV Inc. has been patiently nurturing the EV Industry, a lot have been learned such as the importance of after-sales service and parts availablility and the transfer of technology in the fields of EV maintenance and repairs, electric motors, rechargeable batteries, controllers, chargers and EV testing.
“On top of that, the local assembly of the EV has also provided marginal production volume to some 125 local auto parts makers comprising MVPMAP. It is because to assemble the eJeepney, we only import what MVPMAP members could not supply locally. This has benefitted some 40,000 employees in the upstream and downstream industries dependent on the local parts manufacturing industry”, he says.
A research done for the summit indicates that there is now mounting international pressure on carmakers due to tighter legislations on carbon dioxide emissions. Thus, they are looking at full electric, hybrid and plug-in hybrid technology to provide the answers. This early, they are developing the infrastructure needed such as either battery swapping or charging stations in malls, supermarkets and private and public parking lots. The US currently has around 500 electric vehicle charging stations. This number is expected to increase up to 20,000 by 2012.
However, consumer adoption of the EV technology could be a problem. A study shows that EVs are more expensive than conventional cars, and many people are still not ready to pay more for a "green” car. In fact, according to the recent Financial Times survey, 65% of Americans and 76% of Britons are not yet willing to pay more for an electric car above the price of a gasoline car.
Sales forecasts are therefore tempered. The global electric vehicle sales is predicted to grow to only 2.7 million cars by 2015, with around 885,000 located in North America and around 780,000 in Europe. On top of the heap is China, which currently produces about 90% of the world’s EVs, including electric bicycles, motorcycles and scooters. It is also home to some 66% of the world’s EV manufacturers.
One point to be optimistic about is that EVs have an average efficiency of 80%, which is much better compared to conventional gasoline engines that can effectively use only about 15% of the fuel energy content, and diesel engines are not much better either as they can achieve efficiency of around 20%.
At the summit, the domestic scene will be tackled by resource persons such as Jose Maria Lorenzo Tan of WWF, Ferdi Raquelsantos of MVPMAP, Red Constantino of iCSC, Bert Fabian of CAI Asia Center, Makati Mayor Junjun Binay, Puerto Princesa Mayor Edward Hagedorn, Dr. Manny Biona of Don Bosco, Dr. Jose Regin Regidor of UP NCTS, DOTC Usec. Aristotle Batuhan, DOTC Assec George Esguerra, Jon Croeni of Eonlux Singapore and representatives from Motolite, the Board of Investments, the Department of Energy, the House Committee on Transportation and the Senate’s COMSTE.
Villarreal says that now that the various stakeholders in the EV industry such as manufacturers, battery and other parts suppliers, NGOs, LGUs, the government led by DOTC, the academe, advocates of environmental protection and the private sector led by Motolite and now with Meralco Energy Inc., have come together, it appears that the domestic EV industry is set for a take off. “It’s all-systems go and after the summit, the EV industry will be ready to shift gears to accelerate its development”, he concludes.
