The detroit of Asia now wants a shot at EVs

In 1961, a boxy sedan called the Ford Cortina kicked off Thailand’s auto industry with local workers assembling the cars using parts shipped from Britain. A few years later, Toyota Motor Corp. and Nissan Motor Co. set up factories, launching a decades-long expansion that made the country Asia’s third-largest — and the world’s No. 10 — auto manufacturer.
That position earned Thailand the moniker “the Detroit of Asia,” and with it came a comprehensive supply chain to feed the production of traditional internal combustion engines. Over the space of 50 years, Thailand went from knock-down assembly — where an entire vehicle is put together from an imported kit — to hosting end-to-end manufacturing at 18 plants across the country with thousands of parts suppliers.
Now that electric vehicles are starting to replace combustion engines, the country is again turning to overseas partners to keep its position in the global industry. Whereas Ford Motor Co. of the US and Japan’s Toyota were early drivers of the sector in the mid-20th century, new names like Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group as well as China’s BYD Co. and Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. (CATL) are now keen to help.
A cornerstone of the government’s policy is its 30:30 goal — 30% of vehicles produced to be electric by 2030. It has a two-stage plan to achieve this: first, lure consumers to switch to EVs no matter the origin, and then tip the scales in favor of domestic models.
Subsidies in place for purchases are key to driving demand initially. A reduction in import duties and excise taxes will make all EVs more competitive than their combustion counterparts. But from 2024, those incentives will be reduced (effectively, import tariffs will be reinstated on complete cars, but lower rates charged on key parts), and production quotas implemented, so that Thai-manufactured EVs will be more competitive than both foreign electric models and all ICE vehicles.
Yet, if it’s to remain a global leader in vehicle manufacturing, Thailand has little choice but to build up a more robust technology ecosystem.
“The government needs to maintain the supply chain of the automotive industry, because it’s going to impact about 10% of our GDP if we do nothing and we lose it,” said Ekachai Yimsakul, managing director of Arun Plus Co., which develops and promotes the local EV industry. “We’re talking about 600,000 people in the automotive industry in the country, and more than 10,000 companies.”
Arun Plus was set up by PTT Pcl — a state-backed oil and gas conglomerate which also operates more than 2,000 gas stations across the country — and was given a simple remit: find new opportunities that allow PTT to enter the EV business.
“Because we are a state-owned enterprise, we need to participate in the development of the EV ecosystem for the country,” Ekachai told me during a recent chat at the company’s headquarters in Bangkok. Like PTT itself, Ekachai is new to the EV industry, with a background in project management setting up oil and gas infrastructure. But in Thailand’s electric vehicle sector, everyone is new to the game.
—Bloomberg