Mass production long way to go, say makers

The government has pledged further investment privileges and full support for finance, research and development, human resources and infrastructure as it promotes Thailand as a production hub for future cars, but automakers say miles of development are still needed in the country.

Kazutaka Nambu, president of Nissan Motor (Thailand), said massive manufacturing of electric vehicles in Thailand is unlikely in the near future, as the sales volume of these vehicles is still small and retail prices are not yet affordable.

"Thailand's electric vehicle production still needs a lengthy process of development," he said. "It needs at least two vital steps: promotion of more hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and battery electric vehicles (BEVs) in the country through government price subsidies; and import tax incentives for completely built-up models to be sold locally as well as import tariff waivers for completely knocked-down (CKD) kits and related parts for domestic assembly."

Mr Nambu suggested the government educate Thai drivers about eco-friendly vehicles being beneficial for the environment as well as their affordability, while developing related infrastructure such as electric charging stations.

There are four types of high-tech, eco-friendly vehicles. HEVs and PHEVs were initially developed with two systems: electricity and petrol or diesel. Later BEVs were developed, fuelled purely by electricity, with fuel-cell electric vehicles the latest technology.

In Thailand, there were 70,285 HEVs and PHEVs vehicles owned last year, with 69,816 registered as personal cars.

This puts the population of HEVs and PHEVs at less than 1% of all passenger cars, a total of 7.74 million in Thailand. HEVs have been in the Thai market since 2010, with average prices of above 1 million baht for the mass segment and 3-6 million for the luxury segment.

For BEVs, there were 1,783 such vehicles registered in Thailand last year, but only 59 are passenger cars and 37 are buses, with electric motorcycles making up the lion's share.

Toyota, Honda and Nissan produce HEV models in Thailand such as the Camry, Accord and X-Trail, while Mercedes-Benz imports CKD kits to be assembled here, both for HEV and PHEV platforms in the C-, E- and S-Classes.

Pitak Pruittisarikorn, chief operating officer of Honda Automobile (Thailand), said high-tech vehicle production was still far from a reality here because of lacking demand from Thai drivers.

"Thai drivers still feel HEVs are expensive, with limited parts supply and careful maintenance required. We have to wait until local demand matches supply, which will create economies of scale for car makers to localise their production of eco-friendly vehicles," he said.

Honda earlier intended to make subcompact HEV cars for the Civic and Jazz models but dropped the plan because of low sales volume and high production costs.

Source:
courtesy of BANGKOK POST

by Piyachart Maikaew

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