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Sunday, July 13, 2025

PM: All public vehicles going electric

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1221 days ago
20220310
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley speaks during the Conversations with the Prime Minister on Tuesday night.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley speaks during the Conversations with the Prime Minister on Tuesday night.

Gov­ern­ment will move “very soon” to en­sure that all pub­lic ve­hi­cles are elec­tric, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced at Tues­day’s ‘Con­ver­sa­tions with the Prime Min­is­ter’ event.

And some dri­vers who wel­come the news have re­mind­ed Gov­ern­ment of the need for prop­er in­fra­struc­ture for elec­tric ve­hi­cles, so this will not fail as the bid for CNG-fu­elled ve­hi­cles did.

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion, Row­ley said the move to­wards a CNG pol­i­cy was more or less ob­so­lete now, as it was nev­er ful­ly ac­cept­ed by the dri­ving pub­lic. He said he’d in­struct­ed the En­er­gy Min­is­ter on Tues­day to ac­cel­er­ate Gov­ern­ment’s pro­gramme to seek and ob­tain its new fleet of elec­tric bus­es for T&T

“And Gov­ern­ment will move very soon to en­sure that all pub­lic ve­hi­cles - not just bus­es - are elec­tric,” he said.

He said the Fi­nance Min­istry will al­so move more ag­gres­sive­ly to en­cour­age the dri­ving pub­lic to use elec­tric ve­hi­cles.

“So the ben­e­fit of this will ac­crue to that tar­get we set our­selves.”

The PM cit­ed large fig­ures in the us­age of liq­uid pre­mi­um fu­el, which in­creased from 35 mil­lion litres in 2016 to 105 mil­lion litres last year alone. He said cars on the road are skew­ered to us­ing pre­mi­um gas and that has to do with avail­abil­i­ty.

If T&T is go­ing elec­tric, he said it will be gen­er­at­ed from lo­cal gas and not im­port­ed fu­els.

“So a pol­i­cy is scream­ing out to move to elec­tric ve­hi­cles and we’ve heard that,” he said.

Row­ley said with the pol­i­cy for elec­tric trans­port to come, peo­ple should be on no­tice to start look­ing for elec­tric cars ahead, as T&T can­not con­tin­ue its use of liq­uid pre­mi­um fu­el as it has done for the last four years.

Yes­ter­day, Port-of-Spain-San Fer­nan­do Taxi Dri­vers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Ken­neth Williams said elec­tric was the way to go since the world was head­ing that way.

Kevin Pe­ters added, “It’s a good move but late. Sol­id home­work’s need­ed to en­sure the re­quired in­fra­struc­ture for elec­tric ve­hi­cles is avail­able so this doesn’t fail the way CNG did. CNG could have worked but cost to in­stall kits was ex­pen­sive, plus there was one CNG sta­tion in San Fer­nan­do which ve­hi­cles from all over south used.

“There must be eas­i­ly avail­able charg­ing ports for elec­tric ve­hi­cles, bat­tery cost - which can run to $20,000 - shouldn’t be pro­hib­i­tive and there must be main­te­nance ca­pac­i­ty.”

An­dre Mor­ri­son added, “It’ll be a great move fi­nan­cial­ly for dri­vers - more eco­nom­i­cal, we’ll await what frame­work the Fi­nance Min­istry of­fers to in­cen­tivise it.”

Row­ley al­so con­firmed Gov­ern­ment hasn’t closed the door to the alu­mini­um smelter busi­ness again and is talk­ing to peo­ple about it. He said Gov­ern­ment would be open if the op­por­tu­ni­ty arose once it made eco­nom­ic sense.

“We missed the boat on that and we’re now on the shore wav­ing at pass­ing ves­sels. You could imag­ine if we had built that smelter in La Brea at the time it was be­ing built and the price you’re quot­ing there to­day for some­thing that is not oil or gas, what it could have been con­tribut­ing to the econ­o­my?” Row­ley added.

“But we were right on the doorstep of an alu­mini­um busi­ness. The TGU plant in La Brea was built pre­cise­ly for that pur­pose.” But by the time that plant was fin­ished pol­i­tics had killed the idea and we’re now in a po­si­tion where the most I can say to you is if the op­por­tu­ni­ty aris­es and we keep look­ing for op­por­tu­ni­ties.”

He said Gov­ern­ment would do “every­thing else that we can do to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my” from mu­sic and film to agri­cul­ture.

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