MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Energy (DOE) is eyeing the rollout of 3,000 electric tricycles (e-trike) by the middle of this year, some of which will be deployed in the battle-scarred Marawi City.

The agency is currently testing the e-trikes, a joint effort of the government with the Asian Development Bank (ADB), DOE assistant secretary Leonido Pulido said.

“We are currently doing the commissioning and testing for the units with BEMAC, the Japanese supplier,” he said. “We have until June 2018 to fully deploy the 3,000 units.” 

BEMAC Electric Transportation Philippines Inc. bagged the $30-million contract in 2016 for the supply of 3,000 e-trikes but the units have remained in the manufacturer’s warehouse for lack of takers. Local government units have complained of the e-trikes’ steep price, at P450,000 each.

The Philippine government then worked with the ADB to facilitate the distribution and deployment of e-trikes.

“We spent the last 10 months revising the project administration manual as well as the loan agreement between the DOF (Department of Finance) and ADB. In those revisions, the objective was really to free up the restrictions,” Pulido said.

“First restriction is that only LGUs are the potential offtakers. We removed that. And then, there was a single deployment method, we’ve removed that and, instead, expanded it to several other deployment models,” he said.

The DOE official said they have already reached out to various potential stakeholders and potential operators in the public and private sectors.

Moreover, the DOE is looking to deploy at least a hundred e-trikes to Marawi City.

Pulido said these e-trikes will not require charging stations as they can be charged at home.

“We intend to deploy between 100 and 150 units to Marawi as part of the livelihood program,” he said.

The e-trike program called “Market Transformation through Introduction of Energy Efficient Electric Vehicles (E-Trikes) Project” was signed by government and ADB on Sept. 27, 2013.

ADB will provide the loan for the e-trike production amounting to $504 million, or roughly P21.67 billion. The loans covered the delivery of 100,000 e-trike units.

Of the 100,000 units, 3,000 e-trikes will initially be distributed to LGUs in Metro Manila, Region 4-A and Region 4-B to jumpstart the shift to e-vehicles to reduce the country’s fuel imports and lessen annual carbon dioxide emissions.

The DOE was earlier called out by the Commission on Audit (COA) for its failure to distribute even a single unit of the e-trikes to the intended beneficiaries.

DOE Secretary Alfonso Cusi had ordered the cancellation of the next production of e-trikes.