In T&T, we’ve of­ten heard the state­ment “there are over one mil­lion cars on the road.” This refers to the num­ber of reg­is­tered cars in the coun­try and does not take in­to ac­count dereg­is­tra­tion or in­op­er­a­ble ve­hi­cles. Over the last decade how­ev­er, over 213,000 ve­hi­cles have been reg­is­tered and yet fu­el sales have de­clined.

Over this pe­ri­od, there have been vari­a­tions of to­tal ve­hi­cle reg­is­tra­tions (both new and used) which cor­re­spond to the strength of the econ­o­my at the time. There was a sig­nif­i­cant de­cline dur­ing the pan­dem­ic lock­downs from 2020 – 2022, but since then there has been some lev­el of re­cov­ery in the num­ber of ve­hi­cles im­port­ed, al­though less than the highs in 2017 and 2019.

De­spite the ad­di­tion of new cars to the to­tal T&T fleet, liq­uid fu­el sales have shown a down­ward trend, with the biggest de­clines al­so be­ing dur­ing the pan­dem­ic when road move­ment was re­strict­ed and a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion worked from home. As the re­stric­tions were re­moved, the fu­el sales picked up, but have since showed signs of de­cline for gaso­line and a plateau­ing of diesel sales.

There may be an ex­pec­ta­tion that while ve­hi­cles are added, fu­el sales would con­tin­ue to rise, as the num­ber of cars on the road would be cu­mu­la­tive. This is not the case, how­ev­er. There are sev­er­al ex­pla­na­tions for this phe­nom­e­non.

First­ly, cars are be­com­ing more fu­el ef­fi­cient. Ve­hi­cle man­u­fac­tur­ers are re­spond­ing to pres­sures from gov­ern­ments and con­sumers to re­duce emis­sions and re­duce fu­el con­sump­tion. In T&T there is al­so an in­creas­ing num­ber of hy­brid ve­hi­cles be­ing im­port­ed in­to the coun­try.

Sec­ond­ly, there has been an in­crease in CNG ve­hi­cle sales and con­ver­sions, re­sult­ing in low­er liq­uid fu­el sales.

Third­ly, there is the rise in sales of elec­tric ve­hi­cles; at the mo­ment, there are on­ly around 2,000 elec­tric ve­hi­cles on the road in T&T. How­ev­er with the an­tic­i­pat­ed ex­po­nen­tial growth, the de­mand for liq­uid fu­els will con­tin­ue to de­cline as the fu­el source will shift to the grid.

A fourth rea­son for re­duced fu­el sales is that many per­sons have adapt­ed to new ways of work­ing since the pan­dem­ic. While many per­sons are back out to work and dri­ve dai­ly, many oth­ers still work from home or have a re­duced num­ber of days in the of­fice. These fac­tors mean less fu­el con­sump­tion as the dai­ly com­mute is not what it used to be pri­or to the pan­dem­ic.

Fi­nal­ly, high­er fu­el prices en­cour­age peo­ple to be more con­ser­v­a­tive in fu­el us­age and chose more fu­el ef­fi­cient op­tions.