SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

When David Har­ry­pauls­ingh start­ed look­ing for a new car in 2019, he searched for an op­tion that would cost him lit­tle to noth­ing to main­tain.

Af­ter scour­ing YouTube videos, Har­ry­pauls­ingh dis­cov­ered the Nis­san Leaf, a ful­ly elec­tric four door hatch­back. In his search for the ve­hi­cle lo­cal­ly, Har­ry­pauls­ingh dis­cov­ered P&V Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd, run by head of the T&T Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­DA), Visham Bab­wah.

Har­ry­pauls­ingh set­tled on a brand new 2019 Nis­san Leaf, which cost him $295,000. The car is ful­ly elec­tric and does not re­quire gas to work—it runs on an elec­tric mo­tor pow­ered by a recharge­able bat­tery pack.

While that cost may seem high, Har­ry­pauls­ingh told Guardian Me­dia he has nev­er re­gret­ted his de­ci­sion.

“It cost me al­most noth­ing so far to main­tain this ve­hi­cle, I do not have to change any belts, fil­ters, oil, noth­ing at all to main­tain this ve­hi­cle,” Har­ry­pauls­ingh said.

He said his car charges at a rate of nine per cent per hour and takes rough­ly 11 hours to com­plete­ly recharge.

As for the cost of charg­ing the car us­ing his home elec­tric­i­ty, Har­ry­pauls­ingh said it has been al­most un­no­tice­able.

“I have been pay­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly the same amount every month even af­ter I bought the ve­hi­cle. I haven’t seen sig­nif­i­cant in­creas­es in my elec­tric­i­ty bill.”

He hopes the Gov­ern­ment would in­vest in more pub­lic charg­ing sta­tions, as he said the sta­tions at Brent­wood, Ch­agua­nas and Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain can­not charge his car.

But Har­ry­pauls­ingh said he is sat­is­fied with his ve­hi­cle’s per­for­mance and the mileage a full charge gives.

“I went to New Grant al­ready (from Aranguez) and I on­ly used up 50 per cent of my bat­tery ca­pac­i­ty,” he boast­ed.

He has be­come an ad­vo­cate for the switch to elec­tric, say­ing he rec­om­mends elec­tric ve­hi­cles to any­one he meets.

“The dri­ve is amaz­ing­ly smooth, there is no chang­ing of gears, the ac­cel­er­a­tion is out of this world...This car came with all the bells and whis­tles of a high end ve­hi­cle, it will stop for it­self if you are go­ing to get in­to an ac­ci­dent, it has self park­ing, 360 de­gree cam­eras, this car is just amaz­ing,” he said.

And while Har­ry­pauls­ingh was on­ly re­cent­ly in­tro­duced to the ben­e­fits of an elec­tric ve­hi­cle, his deal­er, Visham Bab­wah has long been an ad­vo­cate for mak­ing the switch.

“I have al­ways been con­scious of the dam­age we have been do­ing (to the en­vi­ron­ment) not just through the au­to­mo­tive in­dus­try alone but through every­thing, lit­ter, waste,” Bab­wah said.

Sev­er­al years ago, Bab­wah ex­plained he be­came the first lo­cal deal­er to im­port ful­ly elec­tric ve­hi­cles.

“I have been im­port­ing these cars since 2015, but back then, the is­sue was the range, so there were con­cerns that you would run out of charge while out and about. The range of the ve­hi­cle was very short,it was 90 miles, so peo­ple were not able to get from Point A to Point B with­out get­ting range anx­i­ety be­cause we had no in­fra­struc­ture where peo­ple could charge their cars,” Bab­wah told Guardian Me­dia.

He cur­rent­ly has sev­er­al 2018 Nis­san Leaf ve­hi­cles in stock that he said have caught the eyes of many po­ten­tial clients.

On Jan­u­ary 1, 2022, when tax al­lowances are ex­pect­ed to be im­ple­ment­ed for the im­por­ta­tion of elec­tric cars un­der two years old, Bab­wah said he will be im­port­ing a much wider range of elec­tric ve­hi­cles.

But even as more peo­ple be­come in­ter­est­ed in elec­tric op­tions, Bab­wah said he tries to con­sis­tent­ly ed­u­cate the pub­lic on the pros and cons of switch­ing to elec­tric.

“I al­ways try to give them the prop­er in­for­ma­tion about buy­ing an elec­tric car be­cause this car has ze­ro tailpipe emis­sions, so I would tell them about the ad­van­tages and dis­ad­van­tages, like you won’t have any ser­vic­ing to do on this car, with re­gards to oil, fil­ter, and these types of flu­ids, but of course you have to bring the car in once a year to have it checked.”

He said this is es­pe­cial­ly im­por­tant as many peo­ple have com­mon mis­con­cep­tions about elec­tric ve­hi­cles.

“Peo­ple need all the in­for­ma­tion be­cause most peo­ple are of the opin­ion that when they buy an elec­tric car, their fu­el bill will dis­ap­pear but their elec­tric­i­ty bill will go sky up. I have an elec­tric car at home that I charge and it costs me about $10 per charge, you don’t even see a dif­fer­ence in your elec­tric­i­ty bill, even if elec­tric­i­ty rates were to go up by 300 per cent, you would still on­ly be pay­ing $30 for a charge which not be any­thing close to liq­uid fu­el,” Bab­wah said

So far, he has sold be­tween 50 to 60 Nis­san Leaf ve­hi­cles.

He said many of his cus­tomers an­tic­i­pat­ed the tax ex­emp­tion that was an­nounced in the 2022 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion on Oc­to­ber 4 by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert. But Bab­wah said his cus­tomers were hop­ing for more of an in­clu­sive pol­i­cy.

“They were hop­ing that there was no re­stric­tion on the kilo­watt and the bat­tery size so they could buy a ve­hi­cle and dri­ve every part of Trinidad and they could come back home and charge at home. A lot of per­sons have called me and ex­pressed their dis­ap­point­ment in the bud­get and the poli­cies an­nounced be­cause peo­ple can­not af­ford to own a ve­hi­cle that is en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly,” Bab­wah said.

He said a lot of his cus­tomers can af­ford ve­hi­cles in the $100,000 to $130,000 price range. He be­lieves the re­quire­ment for ve­hi­cles to be un­der two years old puts those ve­hi­cles out of the price range of many cus­tomers.

“You might like an elec­tric car but it is to­tal­ly out of your range, you will not qual­i­fy for the loan, and if you do qual­i­fy for the loan, the Gov­ern­ment will cause you to in­debt your­self for an­oth­er eight years of your life to pay for a car, which is some­thing I don’t see much fi­nan­cial sense in. Or the per­son will de­cide to buy a reg­u­lar in­ter­nal com­bus­tion car, and it doesn’t mat­ter to them whether they pol­lute or not, re­mem­ber a car in Trinidad, for 90 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion is a ne­ces­si­ty.”

Bab­wah said Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy should not be craft­ed in such a way that it ig­nores 90 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion.

Mean­while, TTA­DA vice pres­i­dent, Ron­dell Fields, said the Gov­ern­ment should re­con­sid­er re­mov­ing tax ex­emp­tions from hy­brid ve­hi­cles.

“You can’t have a move from fos­sil fu­elled ve­hi­cles to elec­tric ve­hi­cles all in one step, we need to have an in­ter­me­di­ary,” Fields said.

He said when tax­es were ex­empt from the im­por­ta­tion of hy­brid and elec­tric ve­hi­cles sev­er­al years ago, the pub­lic re­spond­ed favourably, rush­ing to pur­chase the cheap­er hy­brid op­tions.

Fields said TTA­DA mem­bers sold 40,000 hy­brid ve­hi­cles.

“Can you imag­ine the ben­e­fit those ve­hi­cles had on our car­bon foot­print?” he asked.

He said in or­der to get cit­i­zens to sub­scribe to more en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly op­tions, they must have a va­ri­ety of op­tions.

“The thing is to have a tran­si­tion that is even ben­e­fi­cial to the en­vi­ron­ment, you must get the mass pop­u­la­tion, the mid­dle class con­sumer, the pub­lic ser­vant, who owns most of the ve­hi­cles in Trinidad and To­ba­go to make the tran­si­tion. You may have the high­er stratos­phere who can af­ford an elec­tric car, at $200,000, or $250,000 and we get them to tran­si­tion at this point, but to have any kind of pos­i­tive im­pact when we make this tran­si­tion, you must re-in­cen­tivise the hy­brid ve­hi­cles,” Fields said.

Why are elec­tric ve­hi­cles im­por­tant?

You may find your­self ask­ing how switch­ing to elec­tric ve­hi­cles can pro­tect the en­vi­ron­ment and help en­sure the health of the plan­et for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions?

Sci­en­tists have found that the use of in­ter­nal com­bus­tion en­gine ve­hi­cles (ICEVs) con­tributes al­most one quar­ter of green­house gas emis­sions that are cur­rent­ly heat­ing up the Earth’s at­mos­phere and fu­elling cli­mate change.

Cli­mate change in­cludes ris­ing tem­per­a­tures, ex­treme weath­er events (more in­tense hur­ri­canes and storms, more in­tense heat waves), ris­ing sea lev­els and a range of oth­er im­pacts.

As a Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing State (SIDS), Trinidad and To­ba­go is es­pe­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble to these im­pacts-think about the now al­most con­stant flood­ing events, the coastal ero­sion that has de­stroyed homes and com­mu­ni­ties and the fields of crops that die from drought.

Cli­mate change isn’t just a term that en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists and ac­tivists throw around- it is our re­al­i­ty.

Cli­mate change is a glob­al is­sue and in 2015, at the Unit­ed Na­tions 21st Con­fer­ence of the Par­ties, world lead­ers ex­am­ined its im­pacts on hu­man life. Out of meet­ing in Paris, an agree­ment, a legal­ly bind­ing in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ment, was cre­at­ed. The Paris Agree­ment seeks to lim­it glob­al warm­ing to 1.5°C by 2030.

Yes­ter­day world lead­ers be­gan meet­ing in Scot­land for COP26, where each leader will be called up­on to tell the world how they in­tend to re­duce their emis­sion lev­el be­fore 2030.

By switch­ing from an in­ter­nal com­bus­tion en­gine ve­hi­cle (ICEV) to an elec­tric ve­hi­cle, you will im­me­di­ate­ly re­duce your car­bon foot­print and start con­tribut­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly less green­house gas emis­sions as elec­tric ve­hi­cles do not pol­lute the air with tailpipe emis­sions. In 2018, a medi­um-sized elec­tric car was found to emit about 60 per cent less CO2 equiv­a­lent emis­sions than a gas pow­ered ve­hi­cle.

In Au­gust 2021, a Min­is­te­r­i­al Com­mit­tee from the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment met to co­or­di­nate the ex­e­cu­tion of the Im­ple­men­ta­tion Plan for the Na­tion­al­ly De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tion (NDC) of Trinidad and To­ba­go to the Paris Agree­ment (2017-2030). Dur­ing that meet­ing, Kis­han Ku­mars­ingh, head of the Mul­ti­lat­er­al En­vi­ron­men­tal Agree­ments Unit of the Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­istry said an Elec­tric Mo­bil­i­ty (e-mo­bil­i­ty) Pol­i­cy for Trinidad and To­ba­go is at an ad­vanced stage of de­vel­op­ment. Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is told Guardian Me­dia the pol­i­cy will be pre­sent­ed to the Cab­i­net soon.

Robin­son-Reg­is said she was work­ing on the pol­i­cy to­geth­er with En­er­gy Min­is­ter, Stu­art Young.