The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) remains open to incentives for electric motorcycle and tricycle manufacturers but is currently prioritizing four-wheelers to prevent investment redundancy.
This follows the Electric Vehicle Association of the Philippines (EVAP) criticism of the Electric Vehicle Incentive Strategy (Evis), the P60-billion incentive scheme currently focused on manufacturers that would produce four-wheeled electric vehicles (EVs) in the Philippines.
Explaining the DTI’s rationale for focusing on four-wheeled EVs, Trade Undersecretary Ceferino Rodolfo said the agency considered the existing local manufacturing base for electric motorcycles and tricycles, unlike the four-wheeler segment.
‘We don’t want redundancy in incentives,’ Rodolfo told reporters on the sidelines of an ASEAN Economic Ministers’ briefing on Saturday.
‘We look carefully at which particular sectors or segments of the market need the incentives to be able to drive in the investments, and we have seen that there are already investments coming in for two- to three-wheelers,’ he added.
While Evis currently focuses on four-wheeled battery electric, hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles, motorcycles and tricycles also form part of the Philippines’ electrification targets under the Comprehensive Roadmap for the Electric Vehicle Industry.
Under that plan, the government’s lower-end target is for EVs to account for 10 percent of the country’s vehicle fleet by 2040. This would include nearly 110,000 electrified four-wheeled vehicles, 37,500 electric tricycles and 164,900 electric motorcycles.
Rodolfo left the door ajar for extending incentives to motorcycles and tricycles. However, the window for their inclusion in the initial Evis rollout is narrowing, as the DTI targets opening applications by October.
‘We can reevaluate maybe after 6 months upon implementation of Evis,’ he said.
‘But currently, the focus is on those segments which we feel would really benefit from having incentives for us to be able to bring in both local and foreign investments. And those are in the 4-wheeler segment.’
EVAP had warned that the Philippines risks missing its electrification targets if the government does not consider incentivizing the production of electric motorcycles and tricycles, whose fuel-powered counterparts are more common on Philippine roads than cars.
Producing electric motorcycles and tricycles is also more realistic for the Philippines, Evap argued, given their simpler and more cost-efficient supply chains.