Revisiting the verdant north in an ‘old friend’
SO, THIS was how the main characters in the action flick “Fast & Furious 7” must have felt like at the movie’s end scene, their “one last ride” before finally parting ways.
Before the old Prius—the world’s first mass-produced gasoline-electric hybrid sedan—gets retired to make way for a new iteration, I asked for one last “senti” run with what I consider an old friend in those fast (well, not so fast) and furious days of cross-country driving chasing after energy efficiency.
Toyota Motor Philippines lent me the Prius’ younger and more compact brother, the Prius C liftback. And on the final weekend of July, I endeavored on my last run with an icon.
There was no doubt in my mind that my destination would be Cagayan Valley, where my relationship with the Prius blossomed.
In 2007, TMP invited me to the inauguration of its six-year reforestation project in Peñablanca, Cagayan Valley, a few minutes drive north of Tuguegarao City.
It was the biggest reforestation project a car company had granted to the Philippines by far, and an attempt to replicate the successful reforestation projects undertaken by Toyota Motor Corporation in China and Japan.
I drove from Manila to Peñablanca in a Prius, which was as yet unavailable in the local market. It was also my first time to drive a hybrid. It was love at first drive.
Since then, I and the Prius crossed ways a few more times. And it wasn’t always due north. I also took the Prius sedan on an island-hopping Roro (roll on, roll off) cruise from Manila to Kalibo in Aklan Province via Mindoro island in 2011.
Fortunately, it wasn’t only yours truly who shared the wonders of driving this iconic hybrid. Since June 2009, when the Prius sedan was first made commercially available in the Philippines, and in 2012 when the Prius C first set tires here, the Prius hybrid brand had sold a total of 105 units: 72 for the sedan, 33 for the Prius C.
These numbers may be piddling compared to the tens of thousands of units of Vios or Altis sedans sold, but from the start, TMP brought the Prius here more for making a bold statement than raking in profits: the world’s number one carmaker was making inroads to the future of land transport, at a time when it was not profitable to do so.
The Prius certainly didn’t motivate the Philippine government to issue tax breaks on hybrid vehicles, thus forcing TMP to price the Prius steeply, further hurting its sales prospects.
Yet, across the Pacific, in the United States, the Prius enjoyed a muchwarmer reception, and had even entered the mainstream car market. The Prius became a political statement for Hollywood bigwigs and environmental crusaders alike.
Almost 20 years after the first-generation Prius rolled out in Japan on Dec. 10, 1997, the brand has sold 3.73 million units worldwide (as of April 2016), making it the world’s top-selling hybrid car.
That year, Prius won Car of the Year Japan, and got the award again in 2009. It also bagged an award in the Automotive Researchers’ and Journalists’ Conference of the Year in Japan in 1998.
The Prius was also chosen by the Design Museum as “one of the 50 cars that changed the world.”
Sadly, TMP’s bold statement seems to have fallen on deaf ears in this part of the world (which, ironically, has been determined most vulnerable to the adverse effects of global climate change, a meteorological phenomenon largely attributed to man-made activities such as the extraction and burning of fossil fuels to power vehicles and machineries for various industries—processes hybrid cars like the Prius has been created to mitigate).
This irony was not lost on me, as I had plenty of driving, and contemplating, from Manila to Cagayan Valley and back (a total of almost 900 km) on a rainy weekend. This aptly colored Prius C (green, which is probably not a coincidence) blended very well with the vast cornfields of Ilagan City in Isabela Province.
It was already dusk, and drizzling, when I arrived at the “greenest school in the Philippines”—Cauayan City National High School. It was too dark to enter the premises and marvel at hectare-upon-hectare of its forested land.
Upon my return to Manila, I drove to Pililla in Rizal Province, about a twohour drive east, where about 27 giant wind turbines of the Alternergy wind farm stood majestically, producing around 54 MW of electricity—all from just collecting energy from the wind.
It was a fitting backdrop for the Prius. The future of land transport about to break out of its old shell and face, perhaps, a more receptive government and a local automobile market.