The Electric Vehicles Association of the Philippines headed by its President Edmund Araga, Department of Energy represented by Director Patrick Aquino, EV Car manufacturers and EVAP partners set another milestone with their eco-run 2021 held last Saturday, November 6, 2021.
The Department of Energy in Taguig was the starting point for 20 participants who joined the eco-run with their choice of leg, the North and the South. These 20 participants came from different walks of life, EV owners, from the car manufacturer side, even the DoE Director himself joined the eco-run.
All the participants arrived as early as 8 am with Electric Vehicles. Each group was given a passport that they needed to present upon each arrival of the checkpoint for EV charging points to log their time of arrival and take a picture at the EVAP event booth.
Taking the North leg, the first stop is UNIOIL EDSA Guadalupe. The station is equipped with a fast charging bay for Electric Vehicles.
Next Stop is at Jaguar Land Rover in Greenhills, EDSA, San Juan where the DELTA team welcomed all the participants. DELTA, a leading manufacturer for UPS Systems, is one of the proud partners of EVAP.
Next stop is BYD. BYD is a car manufacturer and has its own line of Electric Vehicles. This is the 3rd stop to the North leg. BYD is located along Buendia and Dian (side going to Pasay).
Last stop for the North leg is the Nissan Otis. Nissan is one of the car manufacturers with an Electric Vehicle series.
The pitstop is at Ford Autohub in BGC where all the participants in the eco-run surrendered their passports for checking of time taken to complete the routes.Pilipinas Autogroup Inc. is also one of the members of EVAP who is the distributor of Dong Feng who has a series of EV cars in the Philippines.
Department of Energy Director Patrick Aquino says, “We are hopeful, in the part of the Government, we are very much committed to see more Electric Vehicles driving in this Country. We are very appreciative of the efforts done by EVAP and its partners, for bringing the technology here. Even without the full government support. Hopefully, you can also be present in echoing our message to your Congressmen, representatives and Senators, that we can finish the bi-cameral conference towards the end of the month so the bill will be passed and approved into Law. We can expect that each sector, end-user will get benefits and incentives to help accelerate this,” he said.
EVAP President Edmund Araga in an interview said that, “As part of our advocacy in accelerating the switch to EV and its charging infrastructure, we need to act now by showcasing existing EV cars that we have in the market and its access in charging these units.”
EVAP Chairman Emeritus Ferdi Raquelsantos, who is also the President of EVOS, welcomed all the participants of this eco-run. Mr. Raquelsantos says, “For those who don’t know the mechanics of what we did for the eco-run, we actually made a measurement of the distance of the total kilometers from the registration, and then we did a simulation of this last week for the time. That is why we specified an average speed, like for the north loop, the average speed is 40km/h and you were supposed to finish it in 30 mins. For the south loop the average speed is only 15km/h. Then it will take you 1 hour and 15 minutes to complete’, he said. “The whole loop takes 45 minutes and the average speed is 30km/h”, he added.
After his speech, he also presented the awards for the ECO Run 2021 Winners:
North Loop:
Runner-up: Alexis Alberi Prado Torio
Winner: Dir. Patrick Aquino-Department of Energy
South Loop:
Runner-up: Joel Macatula
Winner: Mark Tieng – BYD
Both Loop:
Runner-up: Tom Tolibas- Nissan
Winner: Christian Manuel David
Wallbox, another sponsor of the event is a brand that manufactures EV chargers was also present during the event.
Also present during the event were some members of the Electric Vehicle Owners Society (EVOS) with its president Ferdi Raquelsantos.
To date, there are a total of 110 charging stations in the Philippines. With the help of the Department of Energy, the aim to promote, legalize, electric mobility in the Philippines and be able to support the ecology of electric vehicle owners in the Country, takes us one step closer making this into a reality.
With the non-stop increase of fuel nowadays, it is imperative that the move to hybrid or pure electric cars will be a wise choice in the future. Cutting down the use of fossil fuels, saving the environment with emission-free carbon dioxide, and noise pollution-free since electric vehicles are very silent and also power efficient. It also makes it economical to maintain an Electric vehicle since it has less moving parts, only a motor and battery compartment compared to a usual car with a gas or diesel engine.