President Marcos wants the Philippines to not only manufacture more electric vehicles (EVs) but lower its production cost so the country can achieve its goal of transforming its public transportation fleets by 2040.
President Ferdinand 'Bongbong' Marcos Jr. (Photo from the Presidential Communications Office)
In a Facebook post, the President shared his administration’s goal of using EVs for public transport.
“We're also revolutionizing our EV industry and enhancing local manufacturing. Our goal is to achieve cleaner, greener cities with 50 percent of public transportation fleets using electric vehicles by 2040,” he wrote.
During the sectoral meeting on the updates on EV industry development also on Tuesday, Marcos lamented that the cost of production is disabling public transports from purchasing EVs.
“It’s the cost of production. Let’s focus on that for now – cost of production and financing. I think, that’s it. Cost of production and financing and the charging infrastructure,” he said.
The Chief Executive directed the Department of Energy (DOE) and other agencies to focus on finding ways to lower the cost of production, financing a charging infrastructure to ensure a seamless EV industry.
The Philippines is still far from its target of 2.45 million EVs and around 65,000 EV charging stations (EVCs) by 2028.
According to DOE Undersecretary Felix William Fuentebella, the Philippines only have .001 percent or 7,000 electric vehicles registered out of the 14,300,000 registered vehicles.
“So that being the case, we also informed the President that CREVI, the Comprehensive Roadmap for Electric Vehicle Industry, does not only look into the demand, supply and infrastructure pero sinasabayan din po ito ng (also included here are the) manufacturing and development component where we have to position the Philippines in the production of the electric vehicles and its other components,” he explained.
The roadmap is also composed of research and development, as well as human resource development to upgrade workers’ skills.