Mitsubishi Motor Philippines Corp. said it will introduce Euro-4 compliant multipurpose vehicles in 2018 to replace locally-manufactured Adventure and L-300 vehicles.
MMPC vice president Dante Santos said company engineers and designers in Japan and the Philippines were working together to prepare the new specifications for the diesel-fed vehicles.
“We’re trying to cram to be able to fit in the correct model but what we can do is to maintain the same concept. We’re creating a new engine compliant to Euro-4 standards but we will maintain the concept of family-cum-business use,” he said.
The government will enforce Euro-4 standards by Jan. 1, 2018, forcing car companies to stop the production of non-compliant vehicles including Mitsubishi Adventure and L-300 chassis cabs.
Mitsubishi said it was trying to accelerate the design and improve the specifications of the new models that would not veer away so much from the original concept of Adventure and L-300.
“We want something like that because that is good for working and we want a family business thing like the Adventure. We will not go away from those two principles,” said Santos.
The company is also keen on maintaining the high level of local content for the new models that it achieved for Adventure and L-300 at 67 percent and 61 percent, respectively.
Mitsubishi said it was the only company that was able to have more than 50 percent local content for locally-assembled vehicles.
Santos said MMPC would still produce Adventure and L-300 on calculated volumes until the retirement of the models by end-2017.
The company said with the new models, it would infuse additional capital on top of the initial P4.3 billion it announced previously for compliance with the Comprehensive Automotive Resurgence Strategy program.
The program offers as much as P27 billion worth of fiscal and non-fiscal incentives to three approved participants.
MMPC is one of the two car companies that submitted its intention to join the program and plans to enroll the Mitsubishi Mirage as its entry model.
MMPC said with the entry of Mirage into the production line, it expected production volume to increase to over 35,000 units by 2017, or 66 percent higher than expected production in 2016.
MMPC remains the country’s second biggest vehicle seller and manufacturer.
It recently celebrated a new milestone at its Sta. Rosa, Laguna plant as production reached 600,000 units in March 2016.
