The elec­tric ve­hi­cle (EV) tran­si­tion in T&T is charg­ing ahead rapid­ly.

In the past two months, sev­er­al no­table car brands such as Mi­ni (Ace­man), BYD (Shark), Pro­ton (eMas7) and even roll-on, roll off deal­er HSM Mar­ket­ing (Rid­dara RD6) have in­tro­duced new elec­tric and hy­brid ve­hi­cle mod­els to the mar­ket.

While ini­tial­ly, lo­cal deal­ers may have been test­ing the wa­ters by in­tro­duc­ing these mod­els, the lo­cal at­ti­tude to the EV mar­ket has clear­ly changed in the past year and a half. The EVs are sell­ing, and quick­ly at that.

At Thurs­day’s launch of the Vol­vo EX90, the brand’s flag­ship sev­en-seater SUV EV which starts at $ 1.4 mil­lion, Massy Mo­tors brand man­ag­er for Vol­vo T&T, Vir Sie­u­nar­ine con­firmed two of the sev­en EV cars or­dered for this year were al­ready sold.

Kim­ber­ly See­gob­in, Massy Mo­tors sales man­ag­er for Vol­vo, con­firmed new EV sales for the en­tire in­dus­try had in­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly since the ve­hi­cles were in­tro­duced to the mar­ket.

“So for 2023, the elec­tric cars sold in the en­tire in­dus­try sold was 288 units. As of 2024 we have 697 units sold. So that’s over 100 per cent growth,” she con­tin­ued, “Year to date, we’re look­ing at Jan­u­ary to May. That’s the da­ta that we have so far. We’re al­ready at 332 units. And that’s, of course, ex­pect­ed to grow a lot more than that.”

She ex­plained that she ex­pect­ed Vol­vo and the rest of the EV mar­ket to con­tin­ue to en­joy in­creased sales for the rest of the year.

“We have the new EX30, which is our start­ing-lev­el elec­tric ve­hi­cle. Which starts at $299,000. We’ve got a lot of sales from those $299,000 ve­hi­cles as well. I can say we can go up to, by the end of the year, look­ing at the in­dus­try, maybe 300 units that we’ll be sell­ing this year, or even more,” she said.

She ex­plained the hy­brid ve­hi­cle mar­ket al­so con­tin­ued to grow.

See­gob­in said, “For hy­brids, we end­ed 2023 with 949 ve­hi­cles sold by the in­dus­try. And for 2024 we sold a to­tal of 1,616 units for the en­tire year. And this is not just Massy I’m talk­ing about, it is the en­tire in­dus­try, the au­to­mo­tive in­dus­try. For 2025, year to date, we’ve sold 1,021 units that are on the mar­ket right now.”

At the launch of the Pro­ton eMas7, ANSA Mo­tors gen­er­al man­ag­er of in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness, Daryl Young, said the surge in EV sales had been helped by the tax ex­emp­tions on cus­toms du­ty, val­ue-added tax and on­line pur­chase tax for charg­ers and EV car parts had helped the push.

See­gob­in agreed but ex­plained there were some more fac­tors.

“I think one of the ma­jor rea­sons that peo­ple are go­ing to­wards the adop­tion of the hy­brid ve­hi­cles are ex­emp­tions. We have ex­emp­tions on the mo­tor ve­hi­cle tax, the cus­toms du­ties and im­port and VAT,” she said, but she not­ed cus­tomers were al­so look­ing at long-term costs in choos­ing these ve­hi­cles.

“The prices that you pay for hy­brid units is a lot cheap­er than you would pay for a com­bus­tion en­gine de­pend­ing on what type of unit you’re look­ing for. As well, you get more bang for your buck when you com­pare the sav­ings from a hy­brid unit to a com­bus­tion en­gine. You can save. I know some­body who did not put gas in their ve­hi­cle for months be­cause they nev­er had to,” she said.

“ With re­gards to the EV units, on the oth­er hand, I will say there are phe­nom­e­nal sav­ings. When you look at the com­bus­tion ver­sus an EV on what you’re sav­ing on gas per year, it can range from about $12,000 to over $20,000.”

Massy Mo­tors as­sis­tant vice pres­i­dent for ve­hi­cle sales, Charles Bernard, shared an­oth­er point of view.

He felt the pub­lic’s grow­ing ac­cep­tance of EVs has al­so been due to a greater un­der­stand­ing of how they work, as well as the de­bunk­ing of sev­er­al com­mon­ly held myths about main­te­nance and mileage on lo­cal roads.

Bernard not­ed from time to time he still see ar­gu­ments against EVs from some, but it has de­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

“I think some peo­ple don’t even look at the maths be­hind it. Some days, I dri­ve from Port of Spain to San Fer­nan­do every day and back. And that’s on­ly 120 kilo­me­tres most times.

“This Vol­vo EX90 you can get up to 600 kilo­me­tres on a sin­gle charge. So you can do that run twice or three times a week, eas­i­ly, with­out hav­ing to charge. So peo­ple are so con­cerned about not hav­ing the abil­i­ty to charge when they need it. That’s why I said ear­li­er, that dri­ving an elec­tric ve­hi­cle is a lifestyle change. You have to change your lifestyle around the fact that you have an elec­tric ve­hi­cle, and it’ll be fine when it comes to range anx­i­ety. “

Sie­u­nar­ine him­self not­ed peo­ple were be­gin­ning to un­der­stand that they could make long dri­ves with the ve­hi­cles com­fort­ably and cost-ef­fec­tive­ly as well.

“Charles (Bernard) could cor­rect me if I’m wrong, but I think it is grow­ing tremen­dous­ly. I think the fear now of range anx­i­ety and where can I charge and where can I put up a charge as all you know is di­min­ish­ing the minds of the pub­lic. I think now we have with charg­ing sta­tions that are set up at home, and peo­ple are now re­al­is­ing that it’s like a phone.

“When you reach home, you plug it in and you’re good to go. And you can go through­out T&T,” said Sie­u­nar­ine, who not­ed that more charg­ing sta­tions have been in­stalled around the coun­try as well. For in­stance, last year Re­pub­lic Bank in­stalled EV charg­ing sta­tions at six of its branch­es.

Bernard said cus­tomers have start­ed adopt­ing the EVs for a va­ri­ety of rea­sons, rang­ing from cost to en­vi­ron­men­tal aware­ness. 

“We’ve seen, over the last two to three years, a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in elec­tric ve­hi­cles in T&T. I think once most peo­ple dri­ve an elec­tric ve­hi­cle, they are sold on it for dif­fer­ent rea­sons.

“Per­for­mance is def­i­nite­ly one of them. The sav­ings that you can ben­e­fit from dri­ving an elec­tric ve­hi­cle. And as Vir would have touched on, that range anx­i­ety no longer ex­ists. A lot of peo­ple, once they un­der­stand the tech­nol­o­gy and how it can ben­e­fit them and ben­e­fit their pock­et that’s why they go in that di­rec­tion.

“Al­so with this whole push re­cent­ly, with the en­vi­ron­ment and clean­er, green­er en­er­gy, peo­ple are fo­cus­ing on that as well. So that is def­i­nite­ly a big push.”

The Vol­vo team said they will con­tin­ue to ex­pand its EVs, not­ing that Vol­vo is ex­pect­ed to be ful­ly elec­tric by 2030.