There may be in­creased in­ter­est in elec­tric and hy­brid ve­hi­cles in Trinidad and To­ba­go, but gov­ern­ment poli­cies are still pric­ing cit­i­zens out of buy­ing these ve­hi­cles, pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, Visham Bab­wah, said in a Busi­ness Guardian in­ter­view last week.

Bab­wah has long been one of the ad­vo­cates for elec­tric ve­hi­cles in T&T and, as a re­sult, had mixed feel­ings when Topline Find­ings from the An­nu­al Caribbean Re­new­able En­er­gy Fo­rum via the Castalia Re­new­able En­er­gy In­dex re­vealed that this coun­try was among the most op­ti­mistic in the re­gion in terms of adop­tion of elec­tric ve­hi­cles.

“I was a bit con­cerned be­cause some­times state­ments are made and they have to be made in the cor­rect con­text be­fore the pub­lic, so they can un­der­stand what is hap­pen­ing,” said Bab­wah.

“Yes, you have a big uptick now in hy­brid elec­tric ve­hi­cles, more­so the hy­brid than the elec­tric and there are var­i­ous rea­sons for that.”

Bab­wah ex­plained that one of the ma­jor rea­sons for the in­creased use of hy­brid ve­hi­cles in the coun­try has been the price fac­tor, as tax ex­emp­tions have made hy­brid ve­hi­cles a more fea­si­ble op­tion, from a price point, for cus­tomers.

“Of course, the uptick now comes be­cause we had to lob­by the gov­ern­ment over years and years and years to get the ex­emp­tion, the tax ex­emp­tion. And with the re­moval of a tax, peo­ple tend to go to­wards the hy­brid car more­so than elec­tric. The hy­brid car is a lot cheap­er now than the gaso­line car, the non-hy­brid cars be­cause we have a full ex­emp­tion,” said Bab­wah.

How­ev­er, he said the adop­tion of elec­tric ve­hi­cles has not been as preva­lent be­cause in many cas­es, the price of the ve­hi­cles is still out of the reach of most of the pub­lic.

“The elec­tric car has a full ex­emp­tion al­so but an elec­tric car costs a lot more to man­u­fac­ture. So the cost of the car it­self is still rel­a­tive­ly high for the av­er­age per­son, the av­er­age per­son who wants to buy a car, the av­er­age road user who wants to buy an elec­tric car,” said Bab­wah.

“They are quite hap­py to buy them, but be­cause of their salary range and be­cause they have re­stric­tions fi­nan­cial­ly, they are un­able to pur­chase it,” said Bab­wah, who said that even at the high­er price, the po­ten­tial sav­ings from the elec­tric ve­hi­cle would pro­vide some bal­ance to the ini­tial ex­pense.

“The sav­ings is great on an elec­tric ve­hi­cle. If you put $400 to fill one of these gas tanks with liq­uid fu­el, it would cost about $10 to charge the car for the same dri­ve. You might get about 400 kilo­me­tres dri­ve,” the au­to­mo­bile deal­er said.

But with the price a bar­ri­er to en­try, it is hard for the pub­lic to dis­cov­er these ben­e­fits

He ex­plained that the cur­rent age re­stric­tion on these ve­hi­cles, which has pro­hib­it­ed the im­por­ta­tion of ve­hi­cles old­er than three years for sale in the for­eign-used mar­ket, has en­sured that most of the ve­hi­cles re­main out of reach of many.

Bab­wah ex­plained that be­cause of this re­stric­tion, for­eign-used car deal­ers would in essence be im­port­ing cars two years old or new­er which would ba­si­cal­ly negate sav­ings in that mar­ket as the prices are es­sen­tial­ly the same as a brand-new car from the deal­er­ship.

“The price of a new elec­tric car is still close to a used one (two years old). So a used and new near­ly two-year-old car doesn’t re­al­ly make a big dif­fer­ence. And I still call on them to­day to un­der­stand that,” he said.

The Busi­ness Guardian did a check and found that a 2022 Hon­da Vezel is cur­rent­ly for sale at var­i­ous for­eign used deal­ers from around $250,000 to $300,000, while its show­room coun­ter­part a Hon­da HR-V (which is the west­ern name for the Vezel se­ries) hy­brid is be­ing sold ful­ly loaded for $310,000.

Bab­wah added that many were al­so de­terred from switch­ing to hy­brid as the prices of these ve­hi­cles al­so in­creased af­ter the con­ces­sion, which was re­moved in 2020, but rein­tro­duced with new age re­stric­tions in May 2022.

The con­ces­sion was re­in­stat­ed with a sim­i­lar three-year age re­stric­tion last year.

“Be­fore we had the con­ces­sion, I will use a small car, for ex­am­ple, an Aqua. If we had to im­port an Aqua, be­fore there was the con­ces­sion in 2016, these cars were go­ing for over $110,000. When we got the con­ces­sions when the age of the car was about six years the price of this car went down to $55,000 to $65,000,” he said,

“In 2020, we had the per­mis­si­ble age move from six to four to three years. Re­mem­ber the age of a ve­hi­cle is a de­ter­min­ing fac­tor in the price so the price of a hy­brid Aqua would still be $95,000, $100,000, $105,000 de­pend­ing on the mod­el you are pur­chas­ing. Plen­ty peo­ple are say­ing I was buy­ing an Aqua four years ago and it was cheap­er than what I am buy­ing now.”

He said, “We need this pol­i­cy changed again. This way the cit­i­zens would be able to buy in­to this and they would be able to pur­chase the ve­hi­cles to save fu­el and save the en­vi­ron­ment.”

Bab­wah ex­pressed scep­ti­cism over the cur­rent op­ti­mism for these en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly ve­hi­cles could force the prices down, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the price of these cars hinge on Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy.

He al­so ex­pressed con­cern that with the ex­emp­tion of elec­tric ve­hi­cles set to ex­pire at the end of 2023, the grow­ing in­ter­est in them could be lost al­to­geth­er if it is not re­newed or if Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert once again re­moves the ex­emp­tion on hy­brid ve­hi­cles as he did in 2020.

The re­moval of ex­emp­tions on elec­tric ve­hi­cles could see the price of elec­tric ve­hi­cles sky­rock­et sig­nif­i­cant­ly tak­ing them even fur­ther out of the reach of po­ten­tial buy­ers.

“Al­though we have an ex­emp­tion for a ve­hi­cle like the one I’m sit­ting in front of. One of these Benz (EQC 400), if they’re sell­ing for about $799,000, with the ex­emp­tion. If the tax is re­in­stat­ed this same ve­hi­cle would be in­creased by about $400,000 to $500,000. That is if we go to the cur­rent tax struc­ture that is in place,” he said.

Bab­wah said en­cour­ag­ing the switch to elec­tric ve­hi­cles could ul­ti­mate­ly ben­e­fit the Gov­ern­ment as push­ing a switch to these ve­hi­cles could re­duce the amount of mon­ey the Gov­ern­ment spends on im­port­ing fu­el.

That point was a de­ter­min­ing fac­tor in the rein­tro­duc­tion of the hy­brid con­ces­sions in May 2022, as Gov­ern­ment sought to cut down on its fu­el bill as en­er­gy prices soared fol­low­ing the Rus­sia-Ukraine con­flict.