Accelerating patronage and purchases of electric vehicles (EVs) by consumers will serve as the ultimate stimulus to wider investments on the rollout of commercial-scale EV charging facilities in the country, according to Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) Chairman and CEO Manuel V. Pangilinan.

“We should be laying out those chargers, the problem is: it’s a chicken and egg situation. But how can you lay the chargers if you have very few electric vehicles,” he stressed.

Pangilinan opined that Meralco is well-positioned to roll out EV charging infrastructure facilities, but investments can only be concretized if there would be tangible business case of consumers shifting to EVs – and that is a function that must be whipped up not just by the private sector, but most especially by policies being enforced by the government.

“So if we're going to do the charging stations, we have to stimulate the demand and they (government and the private sector) have to be at the forefront of that change - otherwise we're just waiting for each other to move,” the Meralco chief executive noted.

He asserted “if you want to promote electric vehicles and if you're serious about sustainability, we should push that agenda – the sustainability agenda.”

On the part of Meralco, Pangilinan emphasized that the company already has the network as well as the resources to ramp up developments in the EV charging sphere, but the major drawback at this point is really the low uptake for EVs.

“We should be in that space - create the demand and the charging stations will come in. And who is in the best position to lay out the charging network? Meralco isn’t it? Because we got the network in terms of mass deployment of charging stations,” Pangilinan expounded.

Meralco First Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer Raymond B. Ravelo similarly indicated that “we continue to deploy electric vehicles in our fleet,” qualifying that to-date, “we have 156 EVs in our fleet -- that means, we have vehicle electrification rate of around 7.0-percent.”

For this year, Ravelo conveyed that the company is “aiming to deploy about 20-30 more EVs which will bring us up to about 8.0 to 9.0-percent; which is well above the standard set by the government which is 5.0-percent.”

The latest policy prescription laid down by the Department of Energy (DOE) , in particular, is the proposed unbundling of ‘charging fees’ that shall be imposed on consumers when they will recharge their vehicles – primarily for the commercial use-sanctioned EVCS that are targeted to be installed in various parts of the country.

As previously stated by the DOE, the EV charging fees could be drawn up as: fixed fees; variable or consumption fees; time-based fees; service-based fees, cashless payment or it could be calculated factoring in the various proposed methodologies.

It was further stipulated that the charging fees may be prescribed on a per-city or per-municipality basis; and cost structure shall be subject to the review and approval of the energy department.