The Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (ADATT) has added its voic­es to the de­bate on the fu­ture of CNG in this coun­try, say­ing that it is ten­able and per­ti­nent to the au­to­mo­tive mar­ket in T&T.

In re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia, Pres­i­dent of the ADATT, Jerome Bor­de, said: “CNG is ex­treme­ly vi­able and rel­e­vant in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Bor­de con­tin­ued: “This coun­try is a leader in nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion, trans­porta­tion and down­stream us­es. It makes to­tal sense to lever­age our rich nat­ur­al gas his­to­ry and use it as a fu­el for ve­hi­cles.”

His com­ments came af­ter the Pe­tro­le­um Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion’s com­plained about the busi­ness mod­el for CNG be­ing un­prof­itable and un­sus­tain­able. It al­so fol­lowed the Used Car Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion T&T pres­i­dent Visham Bab­wah pub­licly an­nounc­ing his dis­sat­is­fac­tion with CNG.

He said: “We have been lob­by­ing against CNG, not be­cause we don’t like CNG for the past 10 years, but be­cause we knew that it was not a vi­able op­tion for the coun­try, be­cause of the amount of mon­ey that was need­ed to put down the in­fra­struc­ture for CNG to be­come vi­able.”

How­ev­er, Bor­de be­lieves that the NGC CNG and sev­er­al oth­er stake­hold­ers have been down some ex­treme­ly good work in build­ing a CNG in­dus­try.

He not­ed: “While we may fo­cus on Orig­i­nal Equip­ment Man­u­fac­tur­er (OEM) CNG ve­hi­cles, most of the CNG pow­ered ve­hi­cles on the road are con­vert­ed in­ter­nal com­bus­tion ve­hi­cles, which gives those own­ers a much more af­ford­able fu­el and op­er­at­ing cost.” Ac­cord­ing to the NGC CNG Pres­i­dent, Cur­tis Mo­hammed, the CNG con­ver­gence busi­ness has gen­er­at­ed $43 mil­lion dol­lars.

Con­vert­ing in­ter­nal com­bus­tion ve­hi­cles to CNG could pos­si­bly ad­dress the rough­ly pro­ject­ed num­ber of one mil­lion ve­hi­cles on the road. These ve­hi­cles can­not be con­vert­ed in­to hy­brid or elec­tric.

The CNG in­dus­try al­so en­com­pass­es oth­er, ar­eas which cre­ate em­ploy­ment eg the scores of tech­ni­cians at con­vert­ers.

Bor­de said that Clas­sic Mo­tors in­tro­duced the Hon­da City CNG sedan in March 2015 and “the ve­hi­cle has done well for us”.

He said: “The per­for­mance of the ve­hi­cle and the feed­back from cus­tomers is ex­cel­lent and we are hap­py to have been pi­o­neers since this was the first OEM CNG sedan in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Ac­cord­ing to Bor­de, “Ansa Mo­tors have al­so sourced OEM CNG Om­nibus­es and a heavy-du­ty truck.

Oth­er mem­bers of the As­so­ci­a­tion have OEM CNG ve­hi­cles which has carved its own niche.” Bor­de said that the in­di­ca­tion from the in­for­ma­tion com­ing to hand il­lus­trates that there are some 15 OEM CNG brands of ve­hi­cles in T&T, “which is good progress from ze­ro mod­els in 2014.”

Bor­de es­ti­mates that 5 per cent of new ve­hi­cles sold to­day are CNG fu­eled.

He said: “Of the OEM CNG across all mar­ket seg­ments from bus­es, to com­mer­cial, om­nibus­es and sedans since 2014 is around 3000 units.”

Ac­cord­ing to Bor­de, the fig­ure is grow­ing at an in­creas­ing rate as the dri­vers are re­al­iz­ing the sav­ings and re­turns at­tached to CNG.

How­ev­er, con­cern­ing the plight of the PDA, Bor­de said: “Own­ing and op­er­at­ing a busi­ness in Trinidad and To­ba­go has and will al­ways have its chal­lenges.”

He con­tin­ued: “ADATT will not want to com­ment on the PDA’s claims as we be­lieve this can be ad­dressed by the reg­u­la­tor and the rel­e­vant Min­istry of Gov­ern­ment.”

The ADATT is urg­ing all par­ties in­volved to come to­geth­er and dis­cuss the mat­ter at hand and find an ac­cept­able so­lu­tion for all con­cerned stake­hold­ers.