Getting around town has always been challenging for Filipinos. Even when we don’t need to travel very far, transportation is quite a vital part of our daily routine. It isn’t helping that the high price of vehicles, fluctuating cost of fuel, and worsening pollution make the daily grind one of the biggest sources of stress for most urban-living Filipinos.
Ayala Corp. believes that addressing this one aspect of our daily lives — mobility — can cause even greater beneficial ripples in productivity, profitability, and sustainability.
We talk with one of the young leaders that hopes to change the way we commute, Jaime Alfonso Zobel de Ayala, CEO of ACMobility, the mobility arm of Ayala Corporation.
Efficient Innovation
“To enable the greatest number of people to thrive, we believe we need to look into large-scale national challenges that impact people everyday. In the Philippines, mobility is one example of this,” starts Zobel.
“The cost of mobility is heavy on Filipinos. Fuel prices are rising and constantly vulnerable to inflation. The maintenance costs of internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles are also significant. Taken together, fuel and maintenance costs add up over the long-term — especially when you consider that Filipinos typically hold on to their vehicle for at least five years.”
“On top of the financial costs, mobility also has a heavy cost on our health and quality of life, in the form of pollution from vehicle emissions… New energy vehicles are an already available technology that we know can give Filipinos better long-term value in terms of fuel and maintenance costs – with zero emissions.”
By new ‘energy vehicles,’ he means vehicles that are powered by new energy sources like electrification, particularly those offered by ACMobility’s latest vehicle brand, BYD. BYD offers electrified (hybrid gasoline and electric) and battery electric vehicles (BEV) ranging from very small hatchbacks, to versatile SUVs. Electrified vehicles use electric power from batteries to either supplement or entirely replace internal combustion engines (ICE) that rely on costly fossil fuels and emit large amounts of pollution.
Understanding the hesitation
Of course, making the shift is easier said than done. There’s still a lot of hesitation in the general car-driving public, particularly because EVs can’t simply be refueled at existing fuel stations. Rather, they rely on recharging, which may be done at home or at the few charging stations that are already existing. However, charging stations have yet to be as prolific as fuel stations are today, making ‘range anxiety’ (the fear of running out of battery power while on the road) a real concern.
“We need to understand our customers very well because we are asking them to change long-held attitudes and behavior. And to ultimately convince customers to make the leap, we need different parts of the Ayala group working together to solve the different concerns surrounding new energy vehicles.”
Not just a selling car, but an ecosystem
Not surprisingly, ACMobility believes the tipping point will be not just offering a more sustainable vehicle, but also the ‘ecosystem’ to support it.
“There is so much more to sustainable mobility than simply selling vehicles. We also need to make sure that other parts of the customer experience such as financing and range anxiety are addressed. This requires an ecosystem built to deliver long-term value for customers. We needed to evolve to reflect this reality,” Zobel shares.
After all, if factors like ease of financing, charging, as well as service and parts availability are taken care of, the decision becomes easier. To help make that shift, ACMobility integrates other vital services into its package to be able to offer not just a car, but an entire mobility ecosystem.
Making mobility practical
Fortunately, Ayala Corporation already has some big players in its portfolio with Ayala Land and Ayala Malls for real estate, Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) for finance, ACEN for renewable energy, and Globe Telecom for telecommunications. Besides these, the conglomerate is also setting up new companies to support its sustainable mobility endeavors. These include AMP Up, which operates the public charging stations, as well as EVRO, the mobile app that informs users of available charging stations, their locations, and their vehicle’s state of charge.
“We use different parts of the Ayala group working together to solve the different concerns surrounding new energy vehicles – from availability of different vehicle options, to accessible financing, to real estate for convenient charging locations, to energy solutions, all the way to the software that makes the customer experience easy.”
ACMobility envisions greatly simplifying the EV ownership experience for the consumer. With its ecosystem, an owner can simply get up in the morning, take their BYD Atto3 to the nearby Ayala Mall with an AMP Up charging station. Through the EVRO app, they can find which particular charger station is available, park up, and plug-in their vehicle to charge. While waiting, they can have lunch at the mall while the same app will alert the driver when charging is finished.
“We are building the capability to bring in the charging solutions, maintain and operate these charging stations, while developing the digital solutions that will enable customers to access our charging network in the most convenient way possible. In other instances, these solutions exist separately under different companies. ACMobility can bring them all together.”
Getting around town has always been challenging for Filipinos. Even when we don’t need to travel very far, transportation is quite a vital part of our daily routine. It isn’t helping that the high price of vehicles, fluctuating cost of fuel, and worsening pollution make the daily grind one of the biggest sources of stress for most urban-living Filipinos.
Ayala Corp believes that addressing this one aspect of our daily lives — mobility — can cause even greater beneficial ripples in productivity, profitability, and sustainability.
We talk with one of the young leaders that hopes to change the way we commute, Jaime Alfonso Zobel de Ayala, CEO of ACMobility, the mobility arm of Ayala Corporation.
Efficient Innovation
“To enable the greatest number of people to thrive, we believe we need to look into large-scale national challenges that impact people everyday. In the Philippines, mobility is one example of this,” starts Zobel.
“The cost of mobility is heavy on Filipinos. Fuel prices are rising and constantly vulnerable to inflation. The maintenance costs of internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles are also significant. Taken together, fuel and maintenance costs add up over the long-term — especially when you consider that Filipinos typically hold on to their vehicle for at least five years.”
“On top of the financial costs, mobility also has a heavy cost on our health and quality of life, in the form of pollution from vehicle emissions… New energy vehicles are an already available technology that we know can give Filipinos better long-term value in terms of fuel and maintenance costs – with zero emissions.”
By new ‘energy vehicles,’ he means vehicles that are powered by new energy sources like electrification, particularly those offered by ACMobility’s latest vehicle brand, BYD. BYD offers electrified (hybrid gasoline and electric) and battery electric vehicles (BEV) ranging from very small hatchbacks, to versatile SUVs. Electrified vehicles use electric power from batteries to either supplement or entirely replace internal combustion engines (ICE) that rely on costly fossil fuels and emit large amounts of pollution.
Understanding the hesitation
Of course, making the shift is easier said than done. There’s still a lot of hesitation in the general car-driving public, particularly because EVs can’t simply be refueled at existing fuel stations. Rather, they rely on recharging, which may be done at home or at the few charging stations that are already existing. However, charging stations have yet to be as prolific as fuel stations are today, making ‘range anxiety’ (the fear of running out of battery power while on the road) a real concern.
“We need to understand our customers very well because we are asking them to change long-held attitudes and behavior. And to ultimately convince customers to make the leap, we need different parts of the Ayala group working together to solve the different concerns surrounding new energy vehicles.”
Not just a selling car, but an ecosystem
Not surprisingly, ACMobility believes the tipping point will be not just offering a more sustainable vehicle, but also the ‘ecosystem’ to support it.
“There is so much more to sustainable mobility than simply selling vehicles. We also need to make sure that other parts of the customer experience such as financing and range anxiety are addressed. This requires an ecosystem built to deliver long-term value for customers. We needed to evolve to reflect this reality,” Zobel shares.
After all, if factors like ease of financing, charging, as well as service and parts availability are taken care of, the decision becomes easier. To help make that shift, ACMobility integrates other vital services into its package to be able to offer not just a car, but an entire mobility ecosystem.
Making mobility practical
Fortunately, Ayala Corporation already has some big players in its portfolio with Ayala Land and Ayala Malls for real estate, Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) for finance, ACEN for renewable energy, and Globe Telecom for telecommunications. Besides these, the conglomerate is also setting up new companies to support its sustainable mobility endeavors. These include AMP Up, which operates the public charging stations, as well as EVRO, the mobile app that informs users of available charging stations, their locations, and their vehicle’s state of charge.
“We use different parts of the Ayala group working together to solve the different concerns surrounding new energy vehicles – from availability of different vehicle options, to accessible financing, to real estate for convenient charging locations, to energy solutions, all the way to the software that makes the customer experience easy.”
ACMobility envisions greatly simplifying the EV ownership experience for the consumer. With its ecosystem, an owner can simply get up in the morning, take their BYD Atto3 to the nearby Ayala Mall with an AMP Up charging station. Through the EVRO app, they can find which particular charger station is available, park up, and plug-in their vehicle to charge. While waiting, they can have lunch at the mall while the same app will alert the driver when charging is finished.
“We are building the capability to bring in the charging solutions, maintain and operate these charging stations, while developing the digital solutions that will enable customers to access our charging network in the most convenient way possible. In other instances, these solutions exist separately under different companies. ACMobility can bring them all together.”
The long term benefits
In Metro Manila, where the mobility ecosystem is already up and running, ACMobility believes its ecosystem can already create a tangible impact.
“Our team strongly believes that a new energy vehicle ecosystem can solve important national pain points at once,” he shares. “The first is fuel inflation. Customers who use ICE vehicles can feel the effects of inflation more heavily. Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) can provide a solution for the broad population. In our studies, BEVs are 60-70% more efficient than internal combustion engine (ICE) counterparts, meaning your peso takes you much further with BEV cars.”
Its recent fuel efficiency test, supervised by the Automobile Association of the Philippines (AAP), subjected their BYD BEVs to peak rush hour traffic, traveling popular routes within the city. The results showed that driving their BEVs would only amount to an additional P1,500 to P2,000 increase in customers’ monthly energy bill (based on Meralco’s May 2024 rates), as opposed to the monthly fuel costs of an ICE amounting from P5,000 to P6,000.
“The second is in their impact on our government’s sustainability targets. The Philippine government has ambitious sustainability goals for the country and transportation is a critical sector for achieving these goals. Approximately 30% of the country’s emissions come from transportation. This means that any national roadmap for reducing greenhouse gas emissions must include a long-term commitment to sustainable mobility. In terms of reaching our national Emission Reduction targets, BEVs provide a direct solution to reducing emissions [by not producing any] — 30% of which currently come from transportation.”
Change in years, not decades
“While it is still early days here, we are really encouraged by how adoption of new energy vehicles is unfolding in the Philippines,” shares Zobel. “We are seeing steadily increasing customer interest in these vehicles, anchored on a growing recognition of the savings they enable and the enjoyable daily driving experience they provide. What we see is that Filipinos are approaching this transition at different speeds. Some are ready for the full battery electric experience while others are considering other technologies that address their concerns with traditional ICE vehicles.”
Just this month, BYD Philippines unveiled the newest addition to their product line, the Sealion6 DM-i, a gasoline electric hybrid. It is powered by a battery and electric motor, but has a range extender gasoline engine to continue to power the vehicle when charge runs out. It also has a plug-in feature allowing drivers to recharge the battery at a charging station.
“Our goal is to make sure that we have a solution for all kinds of people, no matter where they may be in their transition journey. That’s why we’re working hard to make sure we have a great portfolio of vehicle choices and price points. With the right portfolio of products supported by a holistic ecosystem, our belief is that significant adoption of new energy vehicles in the Philippines can happen in years, not decades.”