Before electric vehicles were in vogue in the Philippines, Nissan Philippines had been gung-ho about them. In 2017, I joined a media trip in Japan to learn more about the second-generation Leaf, an electric car that wasn’t even available in our market at the time. The next few years were spent by Nissan educating consumers about the benefits of EVs—yes, even before the country had a concrete EV law.
And then, four years later, in 2021, Nissan launched the Leaf months before the Electric Vehicle Industry Development Act became official in 2022. You know what happened next. All of a sudden, car brands, including luxury ones, started bringing in their engine-less vehicles. Malls began constructing charging facilities for their customers. And politicians jumped on the bandwagon as more people took notice of EVs.
Sure, not to be forgotten are the commendable efforts of the Electric Vehicle Association of the Philippines in championing the causes of electric cars. But without the all-out support of a major automotive manufacturer in the last few years, EVs would not have advanced in our humble market the way they did.
So now, Chinese brands (both familiar and unheard-of ones) are making a beeline for the Philippines, as though they had placed significant bets on our EV infrastructure. In truth, these new companies are merely taking advantage of the costs paid by Nissan. All the PR, marketing and lobbying expenses shouldered by the Japanese carmaker have borne fruit for everyone to enjoy.
As an executive recently told me: “The Chinese brands were just watching and observing while Nissan was singlehandedly toiling to give EVs widespread market acceptance. And now here they are.”
On Monday, the motoring media met top executives of Nissan Motor Corporation like chief operating officer Ashwani Gupta and senior vice president for global product planning Ivan Espinosa. The activity had two main purposes: Gupta wanted to personally know the car club devoted to the GT-R, and Espinosa answered product-related questions from motoring editors.
Celebrating customers who are obsessed with their popular sports car signified that Nissan bosses are not necessarily boring individuals who have turned to ecological nerds. To them, driving excitement is alive and well.
Which brings us to the second part of the event: a Q&A session with the product-planning boss. During the interview, the executive extolled the merits of Nissan’s e-Power technology. This technology is showcased in the very popular Kicks. It is not quite a full battery-powered EV; rather, it has an electric motor with a 1.2-liter three-cylinder gasoline engine that acts as a generator.
The Nissan bosses were eager to pick our brains as to the products that they should be offering to our market. In particular, they were happy to take note of the success of the Kicks e-Power in our country. They are convinced that e-Power cars are the perfect vehicles for our market. EVs are still expensive for most, but e-Power cars are the ideal compromise between performance and affordability. Based on what they heard from us, I wouldn’t be surprised if more e-Power vehicles made their way here (like the X-Trail e-Power, for instance).
Nissan has the right product portfolio to succeed anywhere in the world. At the event, people were whispering about the brand rebounding sales-wise in our market. In case you didn’t know, supply issues forced Nissan to lose its third spot behind Toyota and Mitsubishi to Ford. The good news is that Nissan got back third place for the month of March. If the supply situation does not rear its ugly head again, Nissan should be able to wrest back its podium ranking.
We were informed that the Nissan executives were supposed to meet President Bongbong Marcos as a courtesy. Unfortunately, they were not able to do so as Malacañang did not fulfill the agreed-upon appointment. Our loss, I suppose. I imagine that the executives were going to discuss the possibility of investing more in our automotive industry knowing that they had an ace in their hand.
Nissan did its job in promoting electric vehicles to car buyers. Now it wants to assure the market that “electric” doesn’t mean dull and lifeless. Whether full battery-electric or e-Power, there’s a lot to look forward to in the brand’s future offerings. I can’t wait to drive them.
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FILL YOUR TANK: “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4)
