More and more of the pub­lic are go­ing all in on elec­tric.

Last Fri­day, LaFast Mo­tors un­veiled the new BMW iX3 at its Dun­don­ald Street show­room, a ful­ly elec­tric pre­mi­um mid-size SUV which is built on BMW’s Neue Klasse plat­form.

The re­veal of the ve­hi­cle is the lat­est in a string of au­to­mo­tive deal­ers re­veal­ing new mod­els in the coun­try.

Two weeks ear­li­er, on June 12, HSM in­tro­duced the Chi­nese brand GAC to the lo­cal mar­ket.

On Wednes­day, May 6, Au­di T&T, un­der the stew­ard­ship of South­ern Sales & Ser­vice Com­pa­ny, of­fi­cial­ly launched the high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed new Au­di Q3 and Au­di Q3 Sport­back, while days lat­er, on May 9, Spec­tra Mo­tors re­vealed Chi­nese brands OMO­DA|JAE­COO at soft launch at its tem­po­rary show­room at Gray Street, St Clair.

The com­mon de­nom­i­na­tor at all of these events was the ac­knowl­edge­ment that de­mand for Elec­tric ve­hi­cles con­tin­ued to surge, as did the in­creas­ing im­pact of Chi­nese ve­hi­cles on the lo­cal mar­ket.

BMW sales ad­vi­sor James Ra­matali, in an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, con­firmed these trends. He said even with the im­po­si­tion of the tax­es on lux­u­ry elec­tric ve­hi­cles (EVs) with a Cost, In­sur­ance and Freight (CIF) val­ue ex­ceed­ing $400,000, de­mand re­mained strong.

“We’ve ac­tu­al­ly been see­ing a spike go­ing on for the past few years. I think it hit an all-time high about a year ago, and it has been steadi­ly go­ing since then, but the de­mand hasn’t dropped at all. Es­pe­cial­ly with the in­tro­duc­tion of tax­es on lux­u­ry ve­hi­cles as well, de­spite that, we are still get­ting a lot of peo­ple in­to elec­tric ve­hi­cles,” said Ra­matali.

Con­cern over that tax had been not­ed by the CEO of South­ern Sales & Ser­vice Com­pa­ny, Im­ti­az Ahamad, at the Au­di Q6 launch event, as he stat­ed the ve­hi­cle had been a top sell­er for the com­pa­ny in 2025, but the team had to ne­go­ti­ate with Au­di to en­sure the price point re­mained af­ford­able.

“Au­di was very sup­port­ive. We were able to change some specs from the ve­hi­cles last year. Au­di gave us some, let’s call it in­tro­duc­to­ry pric­ing, and the ve­hi­cles came down in price un­der $400,000, and so we have elec­tric ve­hi­cle Au­di, elec­tric ve­hi­cles with full ex­emp­tions again, con­sumers and T&T will ben­e­fit,” said Ahamad in an in­ter­view with me­dia at the Q6 launch in May.

Ahamad, how­ev­er, not­ed that Chi­nese brands had been mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant in­roads in the mar­ket, a point recog­nised by Ra­matali.

“BMW is a strong brand, so it doesn’t re­al­ly af­fect us as much as you think. But what you see across the en­tire mar­ket, es­pe­cial­ly for oth­er brands, is that they might en­counter that,” said Ra­matali.

How­ev­er, all deal­ers said the grow­ing con­sumer affin­i­ty for EVs was due to cost-ef­fec­tive­ness.

“We kind of fig­ured out that the mar­ket for a ve­hi­cle like this, at this price point, it’s some­thing peo­ple look at in terms of the val­ue that you get for your mon­ey, and then if you look at the en­tire mar­ket, elec­tric ve­hi­cles are tak­ing over. The rea­son for that is be­cause the ben­e­fits out­weigh in the long term. That way you get bang for buck, you get a lot of pow­er in the ve­hi­cle, you get a com­fort, all the tech­nol­o­gy, and we’re see­ing it across the en­tire mar­ket for the car in­dus­try. Es­pe­cial­ly in Trinidad,” said Ra­matali.

At the GAC launch, where three elec­tric ve­hi­cles were among the five mod­els re­vealed at the event, Dy­lan Smith, the brand’s re­gion­al man­ag­er, said, “Here in Trinidad, elec­tric just makes sense. On av­er­age, you’re look­ing at spend­ing about $45 a month to dri­ve one of these ve­hi­cles. That’s less than most peo­ple spend on a cup of cof­fee.”

On Sun­day, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der al­so stat­ed he planned to look at us­ing more EVs in the Po­lice Ser­vice to bring down costs.

“Let’s say we pay $375,000 for a van. How long does it take for that ve­hi­cle to go for ser­vice, a ve­hi­cle that is on con­tin­u­ous ro­ta­tion in the po­lice ser­vice? Be­cause you all want to see the po­lice out­side, you want to see the po­lice, you want to see road­blocks, you want to see the po­lice by the schools. So the ve­hi­cle is up and down all day, chang­ing shifts. So, we’re look­ing at about three weeks, mea­sure this, three weeks for ser­vice at an av­er­age cost of $10,000 per ser­vice every three weeks,” said Alexan­der.

“How much do you think we’re spend­ing on that? So, what I have done is we are look­ing at elec­tric ve­hi­cles to ease the gas bill, and al­so to see if we could ease up that fi­nan­cial bur­den that is placed on us from the use of that type of ve­hi­cle, and the per­sons who bring them in.”

When asked about an­oth­er trend which saw SU­Vs dom­i­nat­ing sales, Ra­matali al­so con­firmed that con­sumers were grow­ing less like­ly to pur­chase sedans as a re­sult of road con­di­tions.

“Peo­ple al­ways com­plain about the con­di­tion of the roads, and how you know you’re buy­ing a very nice car, sports ve­hi­cle, and then we have these roads in Trinidad that are not (friend­ly) for it. But at the end of the day, it de­pends on when you dri­ve, the road that you dri­ve on, and the tyres that you have. You spend a lot of mon­ey on tyres,” he said, “That’s across the board. So, when you look at these kind of ve­hi­cles, and you look at the con­di­tion of the roads, peo­ple are not de­terred from it, but they’re con­cerned. They’re al­ways con­cerned about- is it pot­holes, is it the car? No, it’s re­al­ly the roads.”

While Ra­matali said the se­ries of car un­veil­ings may be based on year­ly trends—that this time of year was con­sid­ered a peak pri­or to a lull fol­lowed by an­oth­er uptick in sales be­fore Christ­mas—he did note one sig­nif­i­cant change in the ap­proach to pur­chas­ing by con­sumers.

“We are see­ing a greater in­crease in 100 per cent fi­nanc­ing from the banks. What you tend to no­tice from a lot of car in­dus­try ex­perts is that they talk about the econ­o­my’s state based on how to sell it. Nor­mal­ly, peo­ple would have had cash to put down on a ve­hi­cle and pur­chase a ve­hi­cle. We’re see­ing a lot more 100 per cent fi­nanc­ing come in­to play,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Bank Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy Re­port for May 2026, the per­for­mance of var­i­ous lend­ing sec­tors be­tween Oc­to­ber 2025 and March 2026 had slowed to 5.2 per cent from 8.0 per cent in Oc­to­ber 2025.

The MPR had not­ed there were de­cel­er­a­tions in loans for mo­tor ve­hi­cles, debt con­sol­i­da­tion, and re­fi­nanc­ing.

The Cen­tral Bank re­port used the “Num­ber of Ve­hi­cles Reg­is­tered” as a key in­di­ca­tor for mon­i­tor­ing do­mes­tic non-en­er­gy eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty. Ac­cord­ing to the da­ta in the re­port, there had been a no­tice­able de­cline in ve­hi­cle reg­is­tra­tions start­ing in late 2024. Specif­i­cal­ly, the MPR al­so in­di­cat­ed there was a sharp drop in the vol­ume of reg­is­tra­tions in the first quar­ter of 2026 com­pared to the fi­nal quar­ter of 2025.