Sen. Juan Miguel F. Zubiri is pushing for green, hybrid, electric vehicles (e-vehicles), pitching the production and use of these modern conveyance in the country as “a pro-poor measure.”
“This is one of the most pro-poor energy, transportation and health measures,” Zubiri said on Thursday, adding that “contrary to widespread opinion, going electric is not all about multimillion-peso Tesla cars. It’s not about sporting the glitzy status symbol.”
In filing Senate Bill 1524 outlining a Motor Vehicle Development Program, Zubiri explained he was “thinking of the greater good of millions of drivers and passengers in public-utility vehicles,”adding he was pushing passage of the law “for the tricycle, jeepney and bus drivers and commuters.”
Zubiri reported that the Philippines’s electric-vehicle campaign is now supposed to be in the third phase of a four-phase program.
He explained that the Motor Vehicle Development Program for the automotive industry was intended to be implemented in four phases within a 10-year-period, of which the first phase (2013) was the launch of the program, including technology upgrading needed by the industry; the second phase (2014 to 2015) involved the buildup of the local market and enhancement of its production capacity; the third phase (2016 to 2018) for local and export market expansion, together with horizontal and vertical integration with the local automotive industry; and the fourth phase (2019 to 2023) will be the full integration, regional and global, developmental evolution in technological advancement and market size up.”
Zubiri recalled other senators have filed related bills. “I hope the committees concerned will tackle them.”
Aside from the energy, transportation and health benefits that we can derive from a successful e-vehicle program, we shall generate new jobs,” he said.
“Even if the e-vehicle development program starts with assembly of imported CKD [completely knocked-down] units, there will be jobs created as we replace high-carbon, high NO² polluting tricycles, jeepneys and buses.”
Moreover, Zubiri said he expects that “thousands will be employed in setting up, operating and maintaining electric power charging stations.”
He acknowledged in a news statement that the main arguments going against e-vehicles centered on the source of electric power, manufacture of batteries and ecological waste management of batteries.
“To that, we have actually laid down solutions through past laws, primarily the Renewable Energy Act and the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act,” the senator said, even as he pointed out that the science and technology of e-vehicles “gave advanced and some countries have been successfully recycling around 80 percent of the battery.”