Sean Nero

ANSA Mo­tors has an­nounced plans to be­gin im­port­ing CNG ready 24-seater maxi taxis from next month.

This de­vel­op­ment comes sev­en weeks af­ter the com­pa­ny sold its first CNG-pow­ered 21-seat bus to the T&T As­so­ci­a­tion for the Hear­ing Im­paired and is part of a thrust to take the in­dus­try lead the pro­vi­sion of al­ter­na­tive fu­elled ve­hi­cles, said com­pa­ny di­rec­tor and CNG team lead Rishi Bas­deo.

In March 2015, Clas­sic Mo­tors, a di­vi­sion of ANSA Mo­tors, in­tro­duced the Hon­da City bi-fu­el sedan, fol­lowed 17 months lat­er, on Au­gust 26, by the in­tro­duc­tion of the Freight­lin­er range of heavy com­mer­cial CNG trucks by Di­a­mond Mo­tors, an­oth­er com­pa­ny in the group.

"We are not fin­ished. We have com­ing in­to our port­fo­lio–that will be in­tro­duced in Oc­to­ber–CNG mi­ni bus­es that will seat 15 per­sons and OEM (orig­i­nal equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­er) CNG pan­el vans," Bas­deo told the T&T Guardian.

"So, we have tak­en the en­tire port­fo­lio from pas­sen­ger (mi­ni and large bus­es) to light and heavy com­mer­cial. We will have a range of play­ers in the mar­ket. It's ex­cel­lent, be­cause we al­so un­der­stand what the gov­ern­ment wants to achieve with this ini­tia­tive and we whol­ly sup­port the ini­tia­tive. Be­cause of that we have in­vest­ed per­haps more than any oth­er lo­cal car deal­er in this ini­tia­tive."

Bas­deo said maxi taxis were the largest in­de­pen­dent seg­ment of diesel users in the coun­try and the group al­ready had a 90 per cent plus mar­ket share in that cat­e­go­ry.

He said: "We have just com­plet­ed our first Fu­so Rosa con­ver­sion from diesel to diesel-CNG that comes with a full man­u­fac­tur­ers' war­ran­ty from Fu­so, who is ho­n­our­ing the CNG con­ver­sion, so we will be pass­ing that war­ran­ty on­to our cus­tomers."

He added that ANSA Mo­tors had been in dis­cus­sions with the NGC/CNG Com­pa­ny on how that state-owned en­ter­prise could sup­port maxi taxi op­er­a­tors with an in­cen­tive for con­ver­sion. Ear­li­er this year, NGC CNG in­vit­ed com­pa­nies in the heavy du­ty and ex­tra heavy du­ty sec­tor to re­spond to an ex­pres­sion of in­ter­est (EOI) for fund­ing of their con­ver­sion to CNG. Nine com­pa­nies re­spond­ed to the EOI, re­quest­ing that more than 300 ve­hi­cles of their ve­hi­cles be con­vert­ed.

Bas­deo de­scribed the en­gi­neer­ing and fu­el evo­lu­tion as both ex­cit­ing and nerve rack­ing. He said since Gov­ern­ment launched the CNG ini­tia­tive al­most four years ago, the com­pa­ny has de­vel­oped a fo­cused strat­e­gy for its in­volve­ment in the in­dus­try. While NGC had lease op­er­a­tors sup­ply­ing units, ANSA Mo­tors was the sup­pli­er to those lease op­er­a­tors.

"We were first to mar­ket with diesel CNG tech­nol­o­gy, which was not avail­able in the mar­ket pri­or to four years ago. CNG sys­tems since the 1970s have al­ways fo­cused on the gaso­line side of it. That is a much sim­pler tech­nol­o­gy than the diesel CNG tech­nol­o­gy. Gaso­line CNG is called bi-fu­el. It can work in­de­pen­dent­ly of each oth­er.

"With diesel, it's us­ing two fu­els at the same time, so it's dual fu­el and you get ex­cep­tion­al mileage out of it. With our CNG diesel sys­tems, you get an over 60 per cent sub­sti­tu­tion rate in CNG and that is ide­al for what is need­ed.

"Tra­di­tion­al diesel sys­tems that would have tried to en­ter the mar­ket pre­vi­ous­ly would not have giv­en you more than 18 to 20 per cent con­ver­sion. So, we have had an im­prove­ment both on the elec­tron­ic side and on the hard­ware side. What makes it even more ex­cit­ing is that gov­ern­ment has con­tin­ued on its CNG ini­tia­tive and they have ex­pand­ed their scope, so they are not on­ly fo­cused on retro fit­ting or lo­cal in­stal­la­tion, but are al­so very fo­cused on OEM units.

"ANSA Mo­tors has tak­en the lead, even with OEM units. We have been the first to mar­ket with the OEM Hon­da City the first bi-fu­el. Even now, we are the on­ly OEM bi-fu­el unit on the mar­ket and now we are mov­ing for­ward with the Freight­lin­er brand: the first OEM heavy com­mer­cial unit on the mar­ket."

At present, the deal­er­ship had 15 CNG trained tech­ni­cians, in ad­di­tion to its own CNG en­gi­neer, who is ac­tive­ly as­sist­ing gov­ern­ment through the NGC CNG Com­pa­ny and the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Skills Cen­tre.

"So it's not just about train­ing our guys and keep­ing ex­per­tise with­in. We have bought in­to the project and the wider gov­ern­ment as­pect of it, and we are sup­port­ing the gov­ern­ment's ini­tia­tive in that re­gard, through tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer. Out­side of the train­ing, we have al­so in­vest­ed in our work­shop. It has cost us up­ward of US$60,000. There is al­so a heavy in­vest­ment in terms of CNG sys­tems both diesel and gaso­line CNG sys­tems," Bas­deo said.