Am­bi­ka Ja­gas­sars­ingh

am­bi­ka.ja­gas­sars­ingh@guardian.co.tt

With the on­set of the pan­dem­ic, many in­dus­tries faced a myr­i­ad of un­fore­seen com­pli­ca­tions.

For the au­to­mo­tive in­dus­try, it was the glob­al short­age of se­mi-con­duc­tors which mashed the brake on pro­duc­tion, in­evitably trick­ling down to sales.

Ac­cord­ing to Massy Mo­tor’s vice pres­i­dent of op­er­a­tions, Je­re­my Pagee, the com­pa­ny has ob­served some sale per­for­mance im­prove­ment, how­ev­er, it is still low­er than in pre­vi­ous years.

“The ques­tion is one of de­mand ver­sus sup­ply. While there has been a very mod­est uptick from last year, the re­strict­ed sup­ply hasn’t al­lowed us to meet the po­ten­tial of the de­mand, and the mar­ket is still be­low pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els.”

He stat­ed that these sup­ply is­sues af­fect­ed the man­u­fac­tur­ing of the ve­hi­cles, which capped ve­hi­cle pro­duc­tion since sup­ply is­sues pre­sent­ed a chal­lenge.

“We’re in new ter­ri­to­ry when it comes to the ve­hi­cle mar­ket and sales. On one hand, as we move be­yond the pan­dem­ic, we are see­ing a nat­ur­al re­turn of some de­mand, but most ve­hi­cle man­u­fac­tur­ers and deal­ers are fac­ing sup­ply short­ages both from con­straints on the gen­er­al world­wide sup­ply chain as well as some spe­cif­ic elec­tron­ic com­po­nents re­lat­ed to a short­age of se­mi-con­duc­tors used in their man­u­fac­ture.”

He said these con­straints af­fect­ed the avail­abil­i­ty of cer­tain mod­els of ve­hi­cles.

“Sup­ply has var­ied with the brands and the mod­els be­ing or­dered, with fill rates from man­u­fac­tur­ers as low as 40 per cent of or­ders in some cas­es de­pend­ing on the brand or mod­el.”

He al­so added that the last three months have been par­tic­u­lar­ly chal­leng­ing from a sup­ply side and the com­pa­ny would have seen “a 10-15 per cent re­duc­tion in mar­ket per­for­mance over the last few months.”

While the sup­ply of these ve­hi­cles may be im­pact­ed, there must al­so be some con­sid­er­a­tion giv­en to the em­ploy­ment rate in T&T.

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta ac­quired from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice’s Labour Force Sur­vey, the pe­ri­od 2021 to 2022 had the high­est rate of un­em­ployed peo­ple in the labour force as com­pared to 2013-2014.

A 2021-2022 sur­vey re­port­ed that al­most 5.24 per cent of the labour force was un­em­ployed.

Due to the chip in­creas­es, they have al­so ex­pe­ri­enced a fluc­tu­a­tion in ve­hi­cle prices, how­ev­er, Pagee stat­ed that they try to ab­sorb costs as much as they can.

“We have cer­tain­ly ex­pe­ri­enced cost in­creas­es, but con­tin­ue to make every ef­fort where pos­si­ble to in­su­late our cus­tomers from the full brunt of those in­creas­es.”

Ac­count­ing for cus­tomers’ small­er bud­gets, the com­pa­ny of­fers a range of ve­hi­cles to match the pock­ets of vary­ing in­come brack­ets across T&T.

“Our most af­ford­able unit is the MG3, start­ing at $175,000 with our most high-end units in the Vol­vo line with prices of well over $1 mil­lion.”

Re­gard­less of the low­er end of ve­hi­cles, how­ev­er, Pagee added that some of their mid-range priced ve­hi­cles re­mained in de­mand.

“Our most pop­u­lar ve­hi­cle re­mains both the Nis­san Fron­tier and the Hyundai Tuc­son, with prices rang­ing from $199,000 to $379,000 or $269,000 to $369,000 re­spec­tive­ly for en­try lev­el all the way to ful­ly loaded mod­els.”

De­spite the al­ready mount­ing costs of ve­hi­cles, Pagee added that cus­tomers were still will­ing to pay ex­tra cash to have ad­di­tion­al ac­ces­sories and fea­tures.

“There are par­tic­u­lar ac­ces­sories that have both a func­tion­al and aes­thet­ic ap­peal, for ex­am­ple, side steps, pick­up bed tray cov­ers and some spe­cialised decks and head units to en­able more func­tion­al­i­ty. These ac­ces­sories and ad­di­tions re­main pop­u­lar with cus­tomers if the ve­hi­cle does not al­ready come sup­plied with them.”

He added that while these ve­hi­cles al­ready come with up­grades, those pur­chas­ing on the high­er spec­trum of price, tend to re­quest cus­tomi­sa­tions.

“Many mod­els now come from the fac­to­ry with up­grad­ed rims etc that the cus­tomers are will­ing to ac­cept, but there con­tin­ue to be re­quests for spe­cif­ic mod­i­fi­ca­tions, es­pe­cial­ly at the ex­clu­sive high­er end of the mar­ket.”

The VP of Op­er­a­tions al­so stat­ed that some of these ve­hi­cle pur­chas­es are not nec­es­sar­i­ly for pri­vate use alone but with­in the busi­ness spheres of some com­pa­nies.

“There has been a steady and con­sis­tent mar­ket de­mand over the last few years for pick­ups/vans. With many sole pro­pri­etors pur­chas­ing these units, very of­ten they are for a dual use for both pri­vate and small busi­ness pur­pos­es. I would say that the di­vi­sion in the mar­ket be­tween raw com­mer­cial use and pri­vate/busi­ness us­age has re­mained the same.”

An­oth­er trend seen in the au­to­mo­tive in­dus­try has been the switch to more sus­tain­able modes of trans­port.

Pagee added that they re­ceived nu­mer­ous in­quiries about hy­brid and elec­tric ve­hi­cle op­tions, which de­pict­ed an in­ter­est and grow­ing de­mand in the ac­qui­si­tion of these ve­hi­cles. A pur­chase they en­cour­aged.

“We are a strong sup­port­er of both hy­brid and elec­tric tech­nol­o­gy as the world tran­si­tions from pure com­bus­tion en­gine plat­forms.”

De­spite hav­ing sim­i­lar chal­lenges of stock avail­abil­i­ty, like the reg­u­lar ve­hi­cles, Massy Mo­tors hopes to im­prove and ex­pand its se­lec­tions.

“While sup­ply chal­lenges have pre­vent­ed us from ful­ly lever­ag­ing all the avail­able op­tions, we are ex­pect­ing to in­tro­duce a num­ber of plat­forms this year which will see on av­er­age a start­ing point of around $300,000.”

He al­so ac­count­ed for its steep­er price points in com­par­i­son to con­ven­tion­al gas en­gines, since they are more com­plex with the ad­di­tion of elec­tric mo­tor(s) and a large bat­tery pack.

“Bear in mind that hy­brid and elec­tric plat­forms are more in­trin­si­cal­ly ex­pen­sive to­day than their pure car­bon coun­ter­parts, and al­so utilise the same com­po­nents that are cur­rent­ly in short sup­ply.”

He stat­ed that these ve­hi­cles were sus­tain­able and more en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly, a rev­o­lu­tion for up­com­ing ve­hi­cles.

“They are gen­er­al­ly quite en­joy­able to dri­ve and cer­tain­ly ben­e­fi­cial when you look at the CO2 that is emit­ted dur­ing dri­ving. It is cer­tain­ly the fu­ture.”

De­spite this, he added that mar­ket avail­abil­i­ty, lo­gis­tics and cost may re­strict pur­chas­ing abil­i­ty of these ve­hi­cles for some time.

“But the re­al­i­ty of cur­rent avail­abil­i­ty and ac­qui­si­tion price for many dri­vers means that ex­ist­ing plat­forms around pure com­bus­tion will still be with us for some time to come.”

Busi­ness Guardian al­so reached out to the Pres­i­dent of the Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T Ryan Latchu, who echoed Pagee’s re­spons­es.

He con­firmed that the Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers had not­ed “ar­eas of growth and de­cline with­in the au­to­mo­tive in­dus­try in T&T, based on au­to­mo­tive sales, mar­ket trends, cus­tomer in­ter­ests and de­mands.”

He said that while things had slowed down due to COVID-19, sales in­creas­es in 2022 made them hope­ful for the pos­si­bil­i­ties it may bring in 2023.

“As a re­sult of the glob­al pan­dem­ic both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, new ve­hi­cle sales de­creased year on year from 2019 to 2021, how­ev­er in 2022 we ex­pe­ri­enced a mar­gin­al re­bound which is a pos­i­tive in­di­ca­tor. We an­tic­i­pate sales in 2023 to fur­ther in­crease based on con­sumer de­mand and bet­ter avail­abil­i­ty of prod­ucts.”

The Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers rep­re­sents sev­en com­pa­nies in­clud­ing, Massy Mo­tors, ANSA Mo­tors, La Fast Mo­tors, Lifestyle Mo­tors, South­ern Sales & Ser­vice Ltd, Ster­ling Ser­vices (Bat­too Bros), Toy­ota T&T Ltd. He stat­ed that across the board, con­sumers pur­chase ve­hi­cles geared to­wards those with mid-range pric­ing.

“The most pop­u­lar seg­ments are mid-sized SU­Vs with Hyundai lead­ing in that area with an av­er­age price of $300,000 close­ly fol­lowed by the pick­up seg­ment with Toy­ota and Nis­san dom­i­nat­ing with av­er­age prices of $325,000 and $328,000 re­spec­tive­ly.”

He added that since the pan­dem­ic, these ve­hi­cles sourced from abroad now have a longer ar­rival time due to sev­er­al im­ped­i­ments.

“Typ­i­cal­ly, new ve­hi­cle im­por­ta­tion takes any­where from four to eight months to ar­rive from the or­der­ing stage, based on the man­u­fac­tur­er’s pro­duc­tion and al­lo­ca­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ties since the pan­dem­ic. Pre-pan­dem­ic, ve­hi­cle im­por­ta­tion av­er­aged 3 to 4 months from or­der con­fir­ma­tion.”

This long wait time may be a dis­suad­ing fac­tor to con­sumers who might have an­tic­i­pat­ed get­ting their ve­hi­cles soon­er.

“This ad­verse­ly im­pacts con­sumers pur­chas­ing pat­terns sim­ply be­cause the sup­ply is heav­i­ly re­strict­ed for the au­tho­rized dis­trib­u­tors and deal­ers there­by, dis­ap­point­ing some con­sumers at times,” he said.

Latchu al­so con­firmed that the Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers saw a boost in in­ter­est in hy­brid and elec­tric ve­hi­cles.

He al­so stat­ed that these green ma­chines would be the cars of the fu­ture.

“There is a grow­ing mar­ket for sus­tain­able ve­hi­cles and we con­tin­ue to lob­by with the gov­ern­ment to al­low cus­tomers the abil­i­ty to pur­chase hy­brid and elec­tric ve­hi­cles. Sus­tain­able ve­hi­cles are the fu­ture and cus­tomers are in­ter­est­ed in ve­hi­cles that will re­duce emis­sions in the en­vi­ron­ment while re­duc­ing their op­er­at­ing costs.”