Gummybr

The door handle

Haiyoo... Can someone take my chance, I'd rather solve than post new these days.

Very well explained @iRage, you simply said what I wanted to say previously.

Ah they are the ones who guide you in the Himalayas. Can't understand how they are related to our local lorry chassis buses that our guys love.

Yes it is indeed very difficult to hit the revenue target. Three things affect the revenue here 1. the excise duty (charged in engine capacity / motor power on EV) 2. Luxury tax 3. VAT paid at customs Barring the first tax the other two are calculated on the value of the vehicle CIF. VAT could be a significant tax in most cases. So in bringing a 7 year used car you lose out on the luxury tax as well as earnings on the VAT. Again I will ask do we need a 7 year old vehicle when there are vehicles less than 4-5 years old in Sri Lanka? It will have to a balancing act by the government to make sure that they don't exhaust the foreign reserves whilst increasing revenue. After all this is what the IMF said, open imports but keep an eye on your reserves. I don't fault you for anything and I respect your opinion, it's a dilemma that the government is facing, but what I feel is the used car dealers will get their way we will probably end up in the same hole unless govt sits down and do the calculations and work out a long term plan. That is why I said the below in my previous post. To be honest this month will be the last month that I stay in the Automobile industry, and here on I don't care what happens whether you open imports or not. But I do care for Sri Lanka and I don't want Sri Lanka to be where we were in 2022.

This is a wrong assumption, last we imported cars in 2020 March. So brand new and so called "new" were 2019/20 vehicles and used / recondition were 2018/19. So the 7 year story is not true. Correct on tax. Look at it from this point of view. What is the main reason to open up for imports? Is it for the love of the people? The reason is one of the conditions of IMF is to increase revenue, so by bringing in very old vehicles will it let the govt hit the revenue targets? Highly unlikely. Do you think the unscrupulous car sales people will sell 7 years old vehicles for less than what the market is selling, specially when they will be unregistered? Do we need more old cars coming in or newer models coming in? As a petrol head you might say yes we need a new car with newer technology. Or as the general public say we want cars cheaper than a used one and say F U to the car sales people. Lets face it if someone wants a new vehicle there is no option but to get from an agent or a 2 year old vehicle as per current regulations. Solution is for people to understand the hard reality that the Maruti wont come at 2mil and an Aqua for 4mil as per previous duty and exchange rates. I know not everyone will be able to afford a new vehicle in this scenario but there will be people to purchase brand new. I am talking about the ones who are paying 7-8m for a 2016/17 Vitz can buy a new Wigo or a Celerio, anyone paying 18m for a used Premio can still pay 20m for a new car. Anyone paying 60m for a 2018 Prado will buy the new one for 61m. Certain vehicles are still moving in the market, its just that sadly some people have been waiting to purchase a new vehicle at old prices will complain. IMO its time Sri Lanka reset their car market and bought in regulations that is beneficial to the end users and ensure fair competition, whilst you pay the government the correct duties at customs and relevant IRD taxes. Also there should be regulations to make sure that used vehicle market also stick to one policy and sold at fair prices. It is time that consumers are protected by law from all these unscrupulous vehicle dealers.

The VIASL will be up in arms, they already said that there are over 600 importers in the country. The biggest problem they have is as to how they can get the bigger piece of the cake. Let's see what happens, there is nothing concrete in saying the government has / will lift the import ban yet.

Love the wheels. @iRage take the floor.

The given prices does include the Excise duty, Luxury Tax and VAT paid at customs. The reason I believe they say +VAT is because of the uncertainty on how to charge the VAT on the sale as VAT has already been paid at customs and becomes taxed twice. In the era before the excise duty import VAT was less than the sales VAT and as such companies had to pay only the balance VAT to inland revenue department end of the month as they had already paid VAT at customs at a lower rate, so for anyone claiming VAT they got only the balance amount back not the full VAT. It all changed with the excise duty as VAT was deemed to be part of the excise duty when implemented.

Imagine Akio san going crowd Surfing after being a Four Runner in one of the rallies he participates in.

This is going to be a disaster, the VIASL is at the forefront in this importation and they are asking for approval to import 7 year old vehicles, and they are raising their voices wanting the bigger cake. This is the reason that the local agents have started advertising, if not for these ads people will have to pay double the price for a newly registered vehicle in Sri Lanka, now atleast people knows the prices. What I feel is the govt will have to put in caps on the limits and be very strict in who can bring down and what quantities and make sure vehicles are bought for end users and not to stock unnecessarily. This would be impossible with all the grey market crowd as from what I understand they have already bought their stocks and waiting for greenlight to ship them out.

Look I think JKH has taken over 2000 orders, they will have to set up atleast 2-3 fast chargers at all Keells supermarkets to cater to the customers or else we will see a lot of queues for charging.

Yes a Sporty Mountain or a Challenging one. Montero Sport or as they call it in some countries the Challenger. And yes I love that gen Montero Sport as its looks a very tough and and has better off road credentials than the model that replaced it which for me was very soft.

BYD G3 it is. Hope its not going to be a challenging mountain to climb this one, assume it will be easy. Most ones in Sri Lanka came with big V6 engines initially but later on moved to Diesel engines.

Haven't seen these in Sri Lanka, all I can say is they pull 3G's when cornering in your dreams when you build your speed.

Nope over to you. I dont think its any fun owning one unless you know people who are good with these brands and parts for them and have deep pockets to dish out the money when you need repairs. Wont be the most practical as well in my opinion.

Well saying 'Wet Nellie" would be too vulgar. And that was an iconic JB car.

I will just leave this here as well - https://www.esquiremag.ph/wheels/drive/McKinsey-Company-electric-vehicle-anxiety-new-study-a1057-20240731?s=rh8ocuuufteff569ccg13ts8ud Says that 29% of the EV users want to switch back to ICE, so go figure it out.

What if they vanish the same way they pop up suddenly? I think you will be left with an asset that you wont have any aftersales nor parts for. Thats why I said you have to buy from one of the top four Chinese companies or their umbrella brands since most tech would be similar. Sustainability from all these pop up agents I really dont know, I know of one agency who is trying their hard to get someone to head it, but has been unsuccessful so far.

Post the answer if you got it, that wasn't a hard car to get on the first go although the spoiler would have cast a doubt.

Can't remember but I think it was posted on autolanka. Just having a bit of fun these days it's the season.

Elephant 🤣 Cant remember there was a black, Silver and a red if memory serves right.

Didnt one of these catch fire in Colombo? Nellie was never dry in the double O movie of spy who loved the main character. A certain tower with a retail company should just about put the answer.

Yes this is a problem the way to navigate would be to appoint aftersales dealers - as in take current workshops in selected areas and tie up with them for transfer of knowledge and equipment and then work from there. I believe this is what the Chinese are thinking right now. This is the problem with the Sri Lankans they look at price vs quality of work, so many instances I have seen where they bring to the agent after the 'maka baas' screws them and expect the agent to untie the knots in the wool ball immediately. Problem is there are learned people who think they can do a better job than the agent and have started their own workshops with zero experience in the new EV's. For god sake EV tech has moved on from the old Leaf and i3's that they are familiar with, they will take another 2-3 years to understand the new tech unless they have people who are trained in the new EV tech. The correct way would be to have the network in place and to educate the general public (if they are willing to listen) then start importing EV's slowly. We have people driving plug in hybrids who dont want to charge their cars at home saying its inconvenient and that they didnt know, how do you think they will adopt when forced to use a full EV? Having the network in place even if you dont import EV's will be ok as new tech would be similar on the hybrids (plug in hybrids) so you are not losing on your investments and it is better for the public. As you rightly said we need to sort out our charging infrastructure before we import EVs on mass scale, to do that you need proper systems and regulations in place so that people investing in them will not be at a loss with all these plug types etc etc.