DOE seeks supply offers for e-trikes

The Department of Energy has begun seeking offers for the supply and delivery of the first batch of 3,000 electric tricycles under the government’s $500-million electric vehicle project.

Evelyn Reyes, director of the DOE’s Energy Utilization Management Bureau (EUMB), said eligible bidders had until June 18 to submit their offers to the DOE.

A pre-bid conference has been scheduled on May 21 to give investors an avenue to address their concerns.

According to Reyes, the winning proponents will have to start delivering 20 pre-production units per city within three months from the awarding of contracts.

Winning bidders will be given about 10 months to complete the delivery of the 3,000 e-trikes.

Metro Manila will get 2,000 while the remaining 1,000 units will be shared among Regions 4A (Calabarzon) and 4B (Mimaropa), data from the DOE showed.

These e-trikes will be introduced to tricycle owners/drivers under a lease-to-own arrangement.

The first batch of 3,000 e-trikes represented only a fraction of the planned 100,000 e-trikes that the Philippine government wants to distribute across the country, as it moves to jumpstart that critical transition toward a sustainable transport program in the country.

The plan was to replace the gasoline-burning tricycles with these energy efficient vehicles up to December 2017, using a $300-million loan from the Asian Development Bank, a $100-million loan and a $5-million grant from the Clean Technology Fund, and a $99-million counterpart funding from the Philippine government.

The ADB earlier reported that replacing the 100,000 gasoline-powered trikes would enable the Philippine government to save more than $100 million a year in avoided fuel imports, while decreasing annual carbon dioxide emissions by about 260,000 tons.

About 3.5 million motorized tricycles are operating in the country, producing more than 10 million tons of carbon dioxide and using nearly $5 billion worth of imported fuel yearly.