Anyone who has been commuting in the Philippines, especially in its congested cities, knows the feeling of being packed like sardines into inadequately equipped, poorly ventilated (yet overly ornate) public utility vehicles and subjected to the chaos of the streets and the stifling air and noise pollution, every working day.
I did my “tour of duty” in this “war zone” in my younger years, when I was a student and in my early years of employment when I couldn’t yet afford to buy my own private vehicle. My body felt like a punching bag every day I got home. My nostrils were lined with soot. My ears were ringing, and my temper was flaring. Heaven knows how many times I verbally tussled with uncouth passengers, gave “death stares” to rude individuals cutting the lines, and argued with drivers and conductors who shortchanged me.
Imagine my relief when I had my own car to drive, my own personal space to navigate my routes in relative leisure and comfort. Until, of course, when I got stuck in interminable traffic, and I would see precious time go down the drain in a sea of red brake lights.
Our society experienced a two-year respite from this routine onslaught on the streets when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and most of us were forced to stay and work at home. But that period is over, it seems, and now we’re back to normal. It looks like pre-pandemic street life again.
What has changed between then and now? Apparently nothing much, except that, well, there are more roads, and so-called bicycle lanes have been painted on many major roads (which, by my own observations, much of these bike lane markings are slowly fading). Has traffic improved? Have our air and noise pollution indexes improved? I doubt it has, given that the same volume of internal combustion vehicles are still out and about (and have most likely increased by now).
What’s my point? Off the bat, I would say that if even just 10 percent of our vehicles in the cities were electric vehicles (EVs)—public or private—I could imagine a world of difference that would make in terms of the environmental and psychological effects. That would mean one out of every 10 private vehicles would emit zero pollutants, one out of every 10 public utility vehicles would go about in complete silence.
And why stop at just 10 percent? What if half of all vehicles were powered by electricity? What if a hundred percent were? Those are truly mind-boggling aspirations, with some saying that wouldn’t happen in another century. But I can certainly dream of the day when we’re still packed like sardines, but the utter peace and quiet and the pure, fresh air would certainly make up for all the petty inconveniences, right?
The reality is that there’s still a lot of work to be done to make the new Evida law, or RA 11697, which is intended to accelerate the electrification of our transport and develop the industries supporting EVs, make any tangible effect on the commuting public.
As it stands now, concerned government agencies tasked to formulate specific policies and implement rules related to the law are still gathering insights from opposing sides. On one hand, we have the Electric Vehicle Association of the Philippines (EVAP), which had been largely responsible for lobbying for the enactment of the law, and which recommends that the removal of tariffs be limited to PHEVs (plug-in hybrid electric vehicles) and full electric vehicles or battery electric vehicles (EVs or BEVs) and exclude hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs).
Evap president Edmund Araga insists that HEVs are actually internal combustion engines (ICEs) or conventional vehicles which still source their power solely from petroleum, hence they don’t contribute to diversifying energy sources, which is one of the main intentions of Evida. Furthermore, they are not classified as zero emission vehicles (ZEVs). “Providing similar incentives to HEVs will lead to significantly lower prices than PHEVs and EVs and eat up the market and slow down the adoption of PHEVs and EVs which would be detrimental to the whole intention of the initiative. It is important to provide an upper hand to PHEVs and EVs relative to HEVs,” Araga said.
On the other hand, there is the Chamber of Automotive Manufacturers of the Philippines Inc (Campi), a potent business force composed of 20 member companies representing 24 global automotive brands accounting for 85 percent of the country’s total market sales in 2021.
Campi issued a statement June 1, saying that it expressed support to the proposed suspension of Most-Favored Nation (MFN) tariffs on completely built-up EVs, further stating that “Campi supports all EV technologies, including hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), PHEVs and BEVs. All these have potential for fuel consumption reduction and vehicle emission mitigation in the mid- to long-term”.
Campi, through its president Rommel Gutierrez, who is also Toyota Motor Philippines’ first vice president, said “it would not be optimal to homogenize the EV requirements of the transport fleet as different users have varying considerations for EV adoption. For instance, the EV requirements and motivation for adoption of PUV operators significantly differ from that of private transport users.”
Campi further said that its position is consistent with the definition of EVs under Evida, which includes HEVs, PHEVs, BEVs and light EVs. It stressed that all EV-related policymaking should give regard to this and not diminish Evida’s potential.
And then we have engineers like Vitaliano “Bobbit” Mamawal of the automotive division of the Philippine Society of Mechanical Engineers who remind us that “EVs may not be immediately beneficial overall to a country’s economy” unless the country does something to address its energy dependence on coal.
Our long-suffering public commuters shouldn’t hold their breaths just yet for the “golden age of EVs” as promised by Evida. But who can blame them for doing so, anyway, because of the bus or jeep that just belched black smoke in their faces?
