A top official of Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corp. (PSCPC) has admitted that the deployment of electric vehicles (EVs) in the country remains “a challenging undertaking” because of low demand.
“It’s quite a challenging undertaking because, first of all, [the] availability of vehicle, demand. We’re ready to deploy if there’s enough vehicles and facilities. But we also need to understand the degree requirements. Do we have enough capacity to absorb all of these stations? That’s one of the challenges that need to be understood carefully,” said PSCPC President Cesar Romero.
The oil company earlier agreed that EV charging stations would be put up in four of its service stations. This was supposed to have been completed in the first quarter of last year.
The first three charging stations were supposed to be deployed in the following Shell gasoline stations—one at C. Raymundo Avenue, Pasig City; one at 5 E Rodriguez Avenue, Bagumbayan Libis, Quezon City (Shell C-5 Eastwood Northbound); and another at the SM Mall of Asia, Seaside Boulevard, Pasay City.
The fourth location was unknown at that time.
The oil company has partnered with local e-mobility start-up firm QEV Philippines, the joint venture between Filipino and Spanish business partners Endika Aboitiz and Enrique Banuelos for this undertaking.
“We remain open to the partnership to QEV but our deal with them was they are the ones working out the vehicles. We just identify the stations. So far, we have not been notified to construct more,” said Romero.
In February last year, the ABB electronics group announced that four EV charging stations for modern public-utility vehicles (PUVs) will be operational within the first quarter of the year.
As QEV Philippines’s technology partner, the ABB electronics group earlier announced plans to put up 200 EV charging stations over the next three years in support of the modernization program for PUVs in the Philippines.
ABB is a Swiss multinational company specializing in robotics power and automation technology areas. Today, ABB has installations of their EV charging posts all around Europe and in many parts of the world.
Romero added that there are about a billion vehicles globally, of which, about 3 million are EVs. By 2035 to 2040, the number of vehicles is expected to grow about 2 billion, and the number of EVs is expected to grow by about 300 million.
“While it’s a 100-fold increase, if you look at the total proportion, that still has a small proportion as compared to overall quantity of vehicles. It is important to put that in perspective because sometimes it’s so easy to jump into conclusions that EV is the solution to everything,” Romero said.
While the initiative is meant to save over 350 million liters of oil per year, or 3 percent of total imported crude, Romero took note of concerns on energy source.
“The other thing that’s worth thinking about is how [the] electricity [requirement is] produced? If it’s mostly from carbon-intensive sources, then it may not lead to the right reduction of carbon dioxide that you aspire [for]. And the final piece is you need to consume energy to produce the vehicles as well,” he said.
“The station costs about three to five times [more] to build compared to [a] conventional one. The vehicle takes about the same time to build. My point is, it still has a huge cost disadvantage, lots of stuff to sort out,” explained Romero.