The adop­tion of elec­tric ve­hi­cles in this coun­try has sig­nif­i­cant­ly grown and one rea­son is that elec­tri­cal charg­ers and parts are now ex­empt­ed from pay­ing cus­toms du­ty, val­ue-added tax and on­line pur­chase tax. Those mea­sures came in­to ef­fect in Jan­u­ary.

ANSA Mo­tors gen­er­al man­ag­er of In­ter­na­tion­al Busi­ness Daryl Young told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that the T&T elec­tric ve­hi­cle mar­ket has grown sig­nif­i­cant­ly since the amend­ment of tax struc­ture.  

“If I re­call the num­bers off my head, ini­tial­ly when elec­tric cars were in­tro­duced in Trinidad about three years ago, it start­ed at four per cent mar­ket share. To­day they’re up to 15 per cent and grow­ing.”

How­ev­er Young said the Guyanese mar­ket is a lit­tle bit be­hind in terms of the in­fra­struc­ture.

“There’s not a lot of charg­ing sys­tems as yet and the tax­es are still puni­tive on new cars. But they ac­tu­al­ly have been very re­laxed to­wards ful­ly elec­tric cars, not hy­brid cars. So they are en­cour­ag­ing that car­bon foot­print to be im­proved and made a 100 per cent tax ex­emp­tion on ful­ly elec­tric cars in Guyana,” he stat­ed.

Speak­ing at the launch of the Pro­ton eMas7 elec­tric ve­hi­cle on Thurs­day, Young ex­plained that Pro­ton is a Malaysian car, which ANSA Mo­tors be­gan to dis­trib­ute last year in T&T and Guyana.

Young said the ve­hi­cle has ex­ceed­ed the com­pa­ny’s ex­pec­ta­tions.

“We know in Guyana it’s 70 per cent of all core brand sales are Pro­ton alone. So it’s ex­ceed­ed our ex­pec­ta­tions and been very well re­ceived in the Guyanese mar­ket as well as in Trinidad.”

Asked how the Pro­ton brand is com­pet­ing with roll-on, roll-off cars, Young ex­plained that the price struc­ture is dif­fer­ent to a new car and the buy­ers are not nec­es­sar­i­ly the same per­son.  

“What we did with the Pro­ton brand was we brought a car at an en­try-lev­el price point that more peo­ple at the city perime­ter can af­ford again, with their dis­pos­able in­come where it’s at. It’s re­ceiv­ing good ac­cep­tance from that niche mar­ket of peo­ple who want a new car. So young pro­fes­sion­als are now work­ing be­cause they are very tech-savvy buy­ers,” Young dis­closed.

Pro­ton eMas7 is be­ing of­fered at an in­tro­duc­to­ry price of $299,000, but the ac­tu­al price is $349,000.

Young not­ed that the ben­e­fit of buy­ing from ANSA Mo­tors is that one gets the three com­po­nents of a car pur­chase un­der one um­brel­la.  

“You get the car, the in­sur­ance and the fi­nance, which are all in one pack­age. When you buy the ve­hi­cle, you’ll get two years’ ser­vice and two years’ in­sur­ance in­clud­ed in the price,” Young said.

With the 25 per cent US tar­iff on cars not made in the Unit­ed States, Young said thus far, the brand which is man­u­fac­tured in Malaysia re­mains rel­a­tive­ly un­touched.

“It comes from Malaysia di­rect­ly, so we’re not see­ing any ma­jor detri­men­tal hits to us just yet. What the fu­ture holds with US Pres­i­dent Trump and his de­ci­sions re­mains to be seen.  But for now, we’re still safe,” he said.

In terms of the for­eign ex­change crunch and with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar say­ing the gov­ern­ment would be in­ves­ti­gat­ing how the for­eign ex­change is dis­trib­uted, Young said that the short­age af­fects the en­tire new ve­hi­cle in­dus­try in a very dif­fi­cult and ad­verse man­ner.

“I don’t think any­one can ac­cess the US dol­lars re­quired for the amount of de­mand that we have in the units. You’re see­ing the mar­ket com­press­ing a lit­tle bit. You’re see­ing the num­ber of cars com­ing in falling short a lit­tle bit, which is un­for­tu­nate be­cause, of course, the tax struc­ture of cars in Trinidad is very weight­ed in favour of gov­ern­ment tax col­lec­tion,” he dis­closed.

Asked how ANSA Mo­tors is mit­i­gat­ing this is­sue on a day-to-day ba­sis, Young said the com­pa­ny is bal­anc­ing out its mod­el line-up dif­fer­ent­ly.

“You look for cars that the pub­lic is tak­ing in high de­mand.  You bal­ance it with what­ev­er mar­gin of units you can bring in. You can’t, un­for­tu­nate­ly, bring every­thing for every­one.  I can no longer bring my full line­up of cars in any brand that we car­ry in our port­fo­lio be­cause we just don’t have the US-dol­lar al­lo­ca­tion to do that,” Young men­tioned.

On whether the Pro­ton brand is an ex­pen­sive ve­hi­cle to main­tain, the gen­er­al man­ag­er, quick­ly said, “Not at all.”

He high­light­ed that it is the cheap­est car, if not the sin­gle cheap­est main­te­nance op­er­a­tional car in ANSA’s full line­up, which al­so in­cludes brands like Ford, Hon­da and Mit­subishi.  

“It has one of the low­est op­er­a­tional costs you can buy. It’s bet­ter for me in the long run, and of course, be­cause of the low op­er­a­tional cost, as a sec­ond-hand car, it’s a nice car to main­tain and a cheap car to main­tain.”

As it per­tains to hav­ing qual­i­fied me­chan­ics to deal with elec­tric ve­hi­cles, es­pe­cial­ly when it comes to parts, Young said the dif­fi­cul­ty with elec­tric cars is that they re­quire a cer­tain amount of train­ing, tool­ing, equip­ment, and safe­ty pre­cau­tions.  

He un­der­scored that be­fore one can get an elec­tric car as an au­tho­rised deal­er, the per­son has to jump through mul­ti­ple hoops to re­ceive safe­ty and train­ing, and prove that they have in­vest­ed in the right equip­ment, safe­ty equip­ment.  

“Most of these elec­tric cars have to be cor­doned off to be safe in cer­tain ar­eas. Yes, they will find it dif­fi­cult to man­age and main­tain. But ba­si­cal­ly, we are trained by a prin­ci­pal, ful­ly trained. Our tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor has been to Malaysia on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions and has dai­ly con­tact with those guys. So, we’re ful­ly up to speed on what needs to be done,” Young stat­ed.

Con­cern­ing the charg­ers for Pro­ton ve­hi­cles, the gen­er­al man­ag­er out­lined that there is a charg­ing port at Pro­ton’s show­room in Grand Bazaar, and there is al­so the op­tion to pur­chase a charg­er sys­tem.

“We have cer­tain pre­ferred providers in terms of tech­ni­cians. You must have a cer­ti­fied elec­tri­cian, who we cer­ti­fy along­side gov­ern­ment cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, to in­stall the charg­er for you. That’s a very vi­tal com­po­nent,” he added.