To stimulate demand for compressed natural gas vehicles, NGC CNG Company Limited has set a target of November 1 for increased conversions to CNG as the company rolls out its integrated marketing campaign.
NGC CNG president, Curtis Mohammed said an announcement will be made shortly about new CNG incentives. He was speaking at a signing of the memorandum of agreement between D Rampersad and Company and Private School Transport Association of T&T (PSTATT) at Chan Ramlal Street, Chaguanas, on Wednesday.
"We are going to be moving our focus from the new vehicle supply points–because the private sector could easily handle that–to conversions. In T&T we have about 800,000 plus vehicles registered. Most of those vehicles are not electric, they are gasoline and diesel and they can be converted to CNG. That's actually where most of our target would reside and that's where it is right now," he said.
Mohammed, who has been piloting the CNG initiative since 2013, said the market was started up to encourage participation between buyers and sellers of vehicles.
"The commercial segment is going to be important on the new side of vehicles that we are going to be targeting. What you are going to see from November 1 is a much deeper foray into conversions of vehicles," he said.
Avinash Rampersad, general business development manager at D Rampersad and Company Limited, said the company has been successful in developing agency agreements with two international suppliers for the Yutong 2K6729N fully CNG 25-seater and the Ruiyue 18-seater bi-fuel. He said the 18-seater he said will be purchased by a member of PSTATT and arrangements will be made for members of the public to test drive the vehicles. The 18-seater costs $285,000, while the 25-seater costs $460,000.
Rampersad said the company's El Socorro establishment has infrastructure in place to handle conversions.
"We have developed a team comprising eight or nine people and we meet regularly to discuss all CNG aspects of the company, conversions being one of them. As soon as we get our EMA license and Town and Country approval we will be actively going after that business."