TOYOTA Motor Philippines Corp., a subsidiary of GT Capital Holdings Inc., expects demand for hybrid cars to remain strong this year.
“Hybrid cars will continue to grow. The trajectory is nice and people are exploring and shifting,” Toyota Motor Philippines Chairman Alfred Ty told reporters on Thursday.
“We’re trying to bring in more affordable hybrid vehicles to extend the reach to more people.”, he added.
In 2025, hybrid vehicles dominated the electric vehicle (EV) market with 25,737 units sold, or 79.22 percent of the sector. Battery EVs came in second at 4,613 units and plug-in hybrid vehicles were at 2,139 units.
Ty said the hybrid car market was shifting to provincial areas and added, “That’s where we want the demand to grow, to the provincial side.”
“Right now, the market as a whole is shifting to provincial over [the National Capital Region] but the electrification, it’s always like that, NCR starts first,” he observed.
Ty said he was also keen on the Electric Vehicle Incentive Strategy (EVIS), saying that a public-private partnership was needed for this program to work, similar to the Comprehensive Automotive Resurgence Strategy (CARS) program.
“Based [on] the CARS program, I was saying public-private partnership, and it shows that there’s real evidence that it works very well for both sides. In any program, in any car model, there has to be economies of scale for it to work,” he added.
He said Toyota, which participated in CARS, was also open to investing in EVIS.
“After we study and all that, if there is really an advantage, of course, we’re ready to come in. We need to share that to the government on how to make it more acceptable on both sides.”
A component of the Electric Vehicle Industry Development Act, EVIS aims to provide targeted fiscal and non-fiscal incentives to stimulate domestic production of EVs, batteries, parts, charging stations and testing facilities.
As EVIS has not been yet finalized, the government is looking to harness time-bound, targeted, performance-based and transparent fiscal and non-fiscal support to attract EV and EV parts manufacturing into the country.
The Department of Trade and Industry has estimated that EVIS could potentially attract P120 billion worth of investments and generate around 680,000 jobs.
Shares of Toyota Motor Philippines parent GT Capital on Friday shed P4.00, or 0.62 percent, to close at P646 each.
