Toyota Investment in Philippine

The largest automaker is investing in the region to enjoy tax incentive.

Toyota Motor Corporation looks forward to make an investment of around $70 million (US equivalent of 3.22 billion pesos) in Philippine to surge the local production and be eligible for latest tax incentive, according to Southeast Asian nation’s government reported on Wednesday.

Last year, a six year incentive program worth $600 million was introduced by the government to accelerate the automotive output and increase local competitiveness. According to the Board of Investments, the world’s largest automaker will produce close to 230,000 Vios.

Vice-president for Government Affairs at Toyota Motor Philippines, Rommel Gutierrez, endorsed Toyota’s plans to invest, but declined to elaborate further.

Earlier in February, Mitsubishi Motors Corp, said it will likely invest $91 million to build 200,000 Mirage and Mirage G4 cars starting in 2017.

Toyota Motor Philippines is Philippines’ biggest by sales. It is a joint venture with GT Capital Holdings Inc., and is already manufacturing Innova and Vios cars at a factory south of the capital Manila.

Due to the government's Comprehensive Automotive Resurgence Strategy, the Board of Investments also expressed that it is looking forward for auto parts makers/suppliers to collaborate with Mitsubishi and Toyota to create $388 million or above in fresh investment.

In other news, Toyota is also planning to revamp its battery-skeptic position. According to one of Toyota’s leading engineers, Kouji Toyoshima, “Currently, a lot of electricity is still generated from fossil fuels. But this is shifting, and more and more carbon neutral electricity will be generated.”

Primarily, Toyota has been reluctant to adopt batteries to its cars. It has only adopted hybrid-cars for mid range and fuel cell vehicles for the upper range. Toyoshima has now predicted that in the near future the company along with its rivals will be majorly adopting carbon neutral energy. With respect to zero emission energy, “Toyota might even produce bicycles,” the engineer chimed.

Recently, Toyota’s second generation Prius has been launched in Japanese market. At Smart Community 2016 –a small green show –the plug-in attracted a lot of people to it. In the US market, the car debuted back in March. In both markets, however, the car will be available by end of the current year.

The leading engineer has admitted that sales of Prius first generation had been disappointing. He reasoned multiple factors for disappointing sales. He said, “Appearance-wise, it was not possible to tell the difference from the regular Prius. The electric mode range was too short, 26.4 km (16.4 miles) according to the Japanese cycle. In the wintertime, the gasoline engine kicked in rather quickly.”