As T&T slow­ly en­ters the age of elec­tric cars, the feed-in tar­iff has once more emerged as a key tool that can ac­cel­er­ate the coun­try’s en­er­gy tran­si­tion thrust.

Richard Ram­rat­tan, a re­new­able en­er­gy con­sul­tant and the op­er­a­tions di­rec­tor and part-own­er of Elec­tri­fy Com­pa­ny Ltd, in an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, ex­plained that with­out a prop­er pol­i­cy, this move can be stalled.

“The feed-in tar­iff pol­i­cy can al­low bi-di­rec­tion­al cur­rent flow so, we can set up so­lar-pow­ered charg­ing ports at lo­ca­tions. In times when not in use, ex­cess pow­er can be fed back to T&TEC and off­set the net elec­tric­i­ty bill,” Ram­rat­tan said.

An­oth­er is­sue, he iden­ti­fied is in­suf­fi­cient charg­ing sta­tions through­out the coun­try.

Charg­ing sta­tions are the gas sta­tions for elec­tric ve­hi­cles, and a com­mon con­cern is there are not enough of them around the coun­try.

Ram­rat­tan how­ev­er, has been work­ing to ex­pand this num­ber.

His com­pa­ny has al­ready in­stalled such sta­tions at The Re­nais­sance at Shore­lands, The Res­i­dences at South Park, Flow’s head of­fice and at the Unit­ed Na­tions head­quar­ters in Port-of-Spain.

These ar­eas are not ran­dom.

It is to meet the spe­cif­ic needs of those who have in­vest­ed in EVs in the coun­try and re­quire charg­ing while at home or at work.

The wider roll-out of charg­ing sta­tions in pub­lic spaces is more com­plex.

This is where the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) comes in.

Ram­rat­tan and his team are tar­get­ing spaces such as malls, gyms, and movie the­atres.

How­ev­er, he ex­plained that when an EV charg­er is in­stalled, re­cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the build­ing is re­quired and it is an ex­pense that the busi­ness is hes­i­tant to in­cur.

De­spite these hur­dles, elec­tric car sales sky­rock­et­ed in T&T in 2023 with deal­er­ship re­ports show­ing 220 EVs be­ing sold.

While that’s a huge jump from the 35 EVs sold in 2022, that fig­ure is still low.

The coun­try’s af­fec­tion to­wards com­bustible en­gine ve­hi­cles re­mains in­tact.

Some 11,243 such ve­hi­cles were sold last year, mean­ing the EV sales ac­count­ed for less than two per cent of the over­all ve­hi­cles sold in 2023.

Costs force cus­tomers to about-turn

The in­crease in sales of EVs shows a clear rise in in­ter­est among the pop­u­la­tion but the price of the elec­tric cars still re­mains its great­est hur­dle.

This, de­spite some gen­er­ous in­cen­tives from the Gov­ern­ment when it comes to the im­por­ta­tion of such ve­hi­cles.

In Jan­u­ary 2022, the Gov­ern­ment re­moved all cus­tom du­ties, mo­tor ve­hi­cle tax and val­ue-added tax on the im­por­ta­tion of bat­tery-pow­ered elec­tric ve­hi­cles with an age lim­it on im­port­ed used bat­tery-pow­ered elec­tric ve­hi­cles of two years.

The pol­i­cy was ex­pect­ed to be re­viewed af­ter two years.

How­ev­er, even with the ex­emp­tion, pres­i­dent of the T&T Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­DA), Visham Bab­wah, said the cost of EVs re­mains out of reach for the av­er­age con­sumer. “The per­mis­si­ble age for an elec­tric ve­hi­cle is two years which takes the ve­hi­cle close to the price of a new one. The most pop­u­lar and flag­ship mod­el is the Nis­san LEAF and a two-year-old car like that will sell for around $200, 000, and that might be the short-range one.”

Bab­wah says if the per­mis­si­ble age on such ve­hi­cles was raised to be­tween four and five years, the cost could sink by $50,000. “Peo­ple are in­ter­est­ed. They like it, but peo­ple have grav­i­tat­ed to­wards the hy­brid. They save about 50 or 60 per cent of fu­el. They have tak­en to this tech­nol­o­gy more than the elec­tric ones be­cause of cost. We have a long way to go when it comes to the elec­tric car,” Bab­wah said.

He went fur­ther in adding that if the elec­tric cars came in small­er sizes, which means short­er ranges, they may be­come more pop­u­lar lo­cal­ly.

“We have no con­trol over the man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try for elec­tric cars,” he lament­ed.

Be­yond the ex­ist­ing cost of elec­tric ve­hi­cles, Ram­rat­tan point­ed to an­oth­er ma­jor area of con­cern; parts.

While there are gen­er­ous in­cen­tives for elec­tric ve­hi­cles, there are no ex­emp­tions on the parts.

So, if some­one gets in­to an ac­ci­dent or a part of the car mal­func­tions and they have to im­port it, it’s cost­ly.

“The sub­sidiary equip­ment for them (EVs) is still be­ing taxed. For ex­am­ple, the parts, bat­ter­ies, and charg­ers are be­ing taxed. If some­thing goes wrong, the parts are quite pricey be­cause of the tax­es and du­ties and the charg­ers are quite pricey be­cause of tax­es and du­ties,” Ram­rat­tan said.

The re­new­able en­er­gy con­sul­tant went fur­ther in ex­plain­ing how cus­tomers are dis­cour­aged from pur­su­ing an EV.

He added, “You are spend­ing $300,000 on a ve­hi­cle but then you have to spend around $10,000 for a charg­er at your home.”

He said a Wall­box EV charg­er is im­port­ed from Barcelona in Spain and costs around $7,500 for one.

Then, the cus­tomer will have to add elec­tri­cal ca­bling, break­ers, labour and then re­cer­ti­fi­ca­tion from T&TEC.

When com­plet­ed, the charg­er and in­stal­la­tion can amount to $10,000.

EV vs com­bustible en­gines

De­spite the hefty prices and chal­lenges that come with the lo­cal EV in­dus­try, there has been a steady in­crease in the im­por­ta­tion of elec­tric ve­hi­cles in this coun­try over the last five years.

Both Bab­wah and Ram­rat­tan ad­mit­ted it is not the av­er­age cus­tomer pur­chas­ing them.

The in­crease in im­por­ta­tion is be­ing dri­ven by an in­crease in in­ter­est from cus­tomers around the coun­try.

How­ev­er, to la­bel it an elec­tric car evo­lu­tion in the na­tion is still many years away.

Last month, the In­ter­Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) re­leased a state­ment say­ing that T&T has a to­tal of more than 800,000 ve­hi­cles for a pop­u­la­tion of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1.4 mil­lion peo­ple.

Most of these ve­hi­cles have in­ter­nal com­bus­tion en­gines, which pro­duce pol­lu­tion and con­tribute to cli­mate change.

Ram­rat­tan how­ev­er, not­ed that more and more peo­ple are learn­ing of the po­ten­tial sav­ings in gas mon­ey through elec­tric ve­hi­cles.

He said it can cost some­one rough­ly $40 per week in elec­tric­i­ty if they own an EV as op­posed to some­one who has to re­fu­el for around $500 a week.

En­vi­ron­men­tal un­cer­tain­ty

The move to­wards elec­tric cars glob­al­ly is in keep­ing with the world’s am­bi­tion to lim­it glob­al warm­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to Fu­el Econ­o­my--the of­fi­cial gov­ern­ment source in the US for fu­el econ­o­my in­for­ma­tion--each gal­lon of gaso­line a car burns cre­ates 20 pounds of green­house gas.

That’s rough­ly five to nine tonnes of green­house gas each year for a typ­i­cal ve­hi­cle.

While the pro­duc­tion process for lithi­um-ion bat­ter­ies to pow­er elec­tric cars is un­der its own en­vi­ron­men­tal scruti­ny, T&T is much more con­cerned with the dis­pos­al of the bat­ter­ies.

If not dis­posed of prop­er­ly, such bat­ter­ies can con­t­a­m­i­nate wa­ter sup­plies and ecosys­tems if they leach out of land­fills.

Fires in land­fills or bat­tery-re­cy­cling fa­cil­i­ties have been at­trib­uted to in­ap­pro­pri­ate dis­pos­al of lithi­um-ion bat­ter­ies.

Ram­rat­tan in­sist­ed the tech­nol­o­gy when it comes to bat­tery pro­duc­tion has im­proved over the last five years but Bab­wah said there needs to be a pol­i­cy put in place to safe­guard against im­prop­er dis­pos­al of lithi­um-ion bat­ter­ies.

“We have noth­ing in place for that be­cause we have nev­er had this num­ber of bat­ter­ies be­ing changed cur­rent­ly, but we need to put things in place for dis­pos­al of these bat­ter­ies. This is not some­thing you can just throw in the dump. It needs to be dis­posed of prop­er­ly,” Bab­wah added.

Ram­rat­tan as­sured there are plans al­ready un­der­way to deal with such is­sues.

Such plans are in their de­vel­op­men­tal stages with sev­er­al oth­er en­ti­ties to de­vel­op prop­er bat­tery dis­pos­al process­es.

While some parts of the world are rac­ing ahead with elec­tric cars, it re­mains a des­ti­na­tion in the fu­ture for much of this coun­try to get to.