As more mem­bers of the pub­lic are look­ing at meth­ods to cut costs, elec­tric ve­hi­cles are be­com­ing more at­trac­tive.

Last Sat­ur­day, LaFast Mo­tors launched the ful­ly elec­tric Mi­ni Coun­try­man.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Watch, Mi­ni’s coun­try brand man­ag­er Ce­lestee DaBreo said the brand was ex­pect­ing the new mod­el to do well based on feed­back from cus­tomers who had pur­chased its pre­vi­ous elec­tric ve­hi­cle: the Mi­ni Coop­er.

“Two years ago, when we launched our three-door ver­sion of the elec­tric units, they did re­al­ly well. I think we were prob­a­bly the first elec­tric car that came through an of­fi­cial brand that would have launched on­to the mar­ket,” said DaBreo, at the Mi­ni show­room pri­or to the launch.

“Based on his­to­ry, at least the his­to­ry of Mi­ni in the last two years and with the big push to elec­tric we’re see­ing that peo­ple have be­come more ac­cept­ing. Our cus­tomers def­i­nite­ly have. “

DaBreo’s con­fi­dence is not with­out some lev­el of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. She ex­plained that this de­mand was test­ed fur­ther with a tran­si­tion­al hy­brid ver­sion of the Coun­try­man which was al­so sub­ject to high de­mand.

She said that based on the com­pa­ny’s re­search, sav­ings on gas had been one of the ma­jor rea­sons in­ter­est had been piqued in the com­pa­ny’s elec­tric mod­el.

She added that the Coun­try­man holds greater charge ca­pac­i­ty than its pre­de­ces­sor, which al­so proved to be a sell­ing point to cus­tomers who might have been fear­ful of run­ning out of charge af­ter go­ing for an ex­tend­ed dri­ve.

“Each of the units come with a ro­bust charge as well, so that you’d nev­er have to go to the gas sta­tion again, which is some­thing many of our elec­tric cus­tomers en­joy. And you do have the ben­e­fit of just be­ing able to have an elec­tric­i­ty bill in­crease maybe by like, $100 ver­sus a gas bill of $1,200 maybe a month, which, from our re­search, is the av­er­age gas bill de­pend­ing on your com­mute,’ said DaBreo.

This point was re­in­forced by a cou­ple who at­tend­ed the launch on Sat­ur­day. The woman who owns an Elec­tric Mi­ni Coop­er ex­plained that she had spent about $230 for the year to charge her ve­hi­cle where­as she would have spent thou­sands of dol­lars in gas month­ly for the same mileage. This fact con­vinced her hus­band to join her at the launch and po­ten­tial­ly buy a new elec­tric ve­hi­cle.

Long time ad­vo­cate for elec­tric ve­hi­cles, Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­DA) Visham Bab­wah con­firmed he had seen a change in at­ti­tude to­wards elec­tric ve­hi­cles from the pub­lic and the sav­ings on gas was in­deed one of the dri­vers.

“It falls back in line with what I’ve been say­ing. It is a much cheap­er way to dri­ve. It al­most costs you noth­ing be­cause the fu­el price will con­tin­u­ous­ly in­crease at a greater pro­por­tion to elec­tric­i­ty. Your bill will still re­main much much low­er. So the cost to dri­ve would con­tin­ue to re­duce if you have an elec­tric car,” said Bab­wah.

“When I did the es­ti­mate at the be­gin­ning, a few years ago ,when I was pi­o­neer­ing this, I was telling peo­ple it will lit­er­al­ly cost you noth­ing. Where you will be putting in what $400 or $500 to full a liq­uid fu­el tank, it will cost you about $20 for that same amount of dri­ve. So if you got 500 or 600 kilo­me­ters in that dri­ve for $400, you will get that for un­der $20 with an elec­tric ve­hi­cle.”

Bab­wah al­so added that there was re­duced fear of run­ning out of charge as the new­er mod­el of elec­tric ve­hi­cles hold greater mileage ca­pac­i­ty per charge.

 “The dri­ving range has be­come longer. Pre­vi­ous­ly, in the first set of cars, the dri­ving range was short­er like 150 miles. So, peo­ple were hav­ing what is called range anx­i­ety. With the new­er mod­el ve­hi­cles now, be­cause they have a longer dri­ving range peo­ple are grav­i­tat­ing to­wards it,’ said Bab­wah.

The oth­er fac­tor was the in­creas­ing num­ber of pub­lic charg­ing ports be­ing in­stalled around the coun­try.

In May, Re­pub­lic Bank in part­ner­ship with LaFast Mo­tors in­stalled elec­tric ve­hi­cle charg­ing sta­tions at six of the bank’s lo­ca­tions; Park Street (PoS), Eller­slie Court, Trinci­ty, High Street (San Fer­nan­do), South Park (San Fer­nan­do) and the Uni­ver­si­ty of West In­dies. Pri­or to this there were charg­ing ports at Cipri­ani Boule­vard, the Hilton, Pi­ar­co, Cou­va and La­dy Hailes Av­enue.

“There are a few sta­tions that have been in­stalled through­out the coun­try, not through the coun­try per se but in cer­tain ar­eas. More so in cen­tral and Port-of-Spain area which peo­ple are hap­py about where they can still charge if they should run out of charge some­where along the way,” said Bab­wah.

He how­ev­er ad­mit­ted there was still some con­cern when it came to the main­te­nance of elec­tric ve­hi­cles, par­tic­u­lar­ly re­gard­ing peo­ple who did not pur­chase elec­tric or hy­brid ve­hi­cles through a deal­er.

“This is a prob­lem that would con­tin­ue to hap­pen be­cause a lot of peo­ple, they want to sell cars, they want to be a car deal­er, but they have not in­vest­ed in their tech­ni­cians be­ing trained. And this is some­thing that I have been lob­by­ing for,” said Bab­wah, who ad­mit­ted many cus­tomers were left out in the cold be­cause of the lim­it­ed avail­abil­i­ty of tech­ni­cians for such ve­hi­cles.

LaFast’s mas­ter tech­ni­cian Shaun Uren how­ev­er be­lieved that over­all main­te­nance costs through the deal­er­ship would still ben­e­fit the con­sumer in the long run.

“If we’re speak­ing specif­i­cal­ly to the elec­tric mod­el, the elec­tric op­tions, we are ser­vic­ing those cars every two years. They’re not based on mileage, they’re based on time. So from man­u­fac­tur­er date, so your sec­ond year, and then your fourth year, and then be­yond that,” said Uren, who is from South Africa. He ex­plained the cost of re­plac­ing the bat­tery may not be oner­ous as some might think.

‘The bat­tery ac­tu­al­ly has com­po­nents, so most peo­ple are con­cerned that they have to re­place an en­tire bat­tery, and the cost of that, which is ob­vi­ous­ly some­thing that would be a ma­jor con­cern. But I would say re­plac­ing an en­tire bat­tery is still cheap­er than re­plac­ing an en­tire en­gine, but with your war­ran­ty on your bat­tery, be­cause, of course, cus­tomers want to feel pro­tect­ed, we have 12 cell com­po­nents with­in each of the bat­ter­ies, and you ac­tu­al­ly can change one cell. You’re not go­ing to have all 12 cells go bad at any giv­en time, un­less you’re in an ac­ci­dent, and the en­tire bat­tery needs to be re­placed.”

While the over­all num­ber of EVs sold in T&T re­mains sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er than their com­bus­tion and EV coun­ter­parts, sta­tis­tics con­firmed that the num­ber of sales has steadi­ly in­creased. In 2023 220 EVs, were sold. In 2022, on­ly 35 were bought.

Since 2023, sev­er­al deal­er­ships have in­tro­duced new EV mod­els to the mar­ket in­clud­ing Vol­vo, MG, GWN and Hyundai.

Mi­ni has stat­ed its in­ten­tion to be ful­ly elec­tric by 2030.