Toyota Motor Thailand is ready to implement its 10.41-billion-baht eco-car project in 2019, the deadline year for Board of Investment (BoI) incentives.
Yesterday President Michinobu Sugata said Toyota will soon enter the second phase of the government's eco-car scheme this year. Eco-car production is located at Toyota's passenger car plant in the Gateway City Industrial Estate, Chachoengsao province.
Toyota has joined both phases of the eco-car scheme. The first was launched in 2007 when Toyota applied for 4.64 billion baht in investment privileges at Gateway to produce 100,000 eco-cars.
Toyota introduced the Yaris eco-car under the first phase in October 2013, which was the deadline year for the scheme.
Applications for the second phase ended in March 2014, with Toyota applying for 10.41 billion baht in investment.
Suparat Sirisuwanangkura, a senior executive adviser, said Toyota is trying to complete its first-phase production run with a combined output of 400,000 cars, as required by the BoI.
"We almost hit this massive volume and are moving to phase two as planned," he said. "Toyota has divided eco-cars between local and export sales to meet this targeted volume."
BoI regulations call for production of 500,000 eco-cars in the second phase.
In the eco-car segment, Toyota controls the largest market share with 32.8% from 68,804 cars sold in 2018. This segment had total sales of 209,522 cars from six Japanese brands in 2018, up by 34.1% from a year before.
Last year the eco-car segment made up 52.4% of the passenger car market. Nissan, Honda, Mitsubishi, Suzuki, Toyota and Mazda all participated in the scheme.
Thailand made 2.46 million eco-cars between March 2010 and December 2018. The domestic market took up 1.11 million, while 1.35 million eco-cars were shipped.
Mr Suparat said Toyota opposes the government's Eco EV programme that aims to encourage six eco-car makers to produce EVs with affordable price tags.
"The existing EV scheme is competitive enough to create new production of EVs locally," he said.
