Environment, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

ENVIRONMENT-BRAZIL: A Hybrid Revolution on Wheels

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, May 20 2003 (IPS) - Brazil is hopping on the bus in the new era of electric hybrid vehicles, which some experts say will revolutionise the automobile industry in the coming years, thanks to their energy efficiency and other environmentally-friendly advantages.

Eletra, a small manufacturer in Sao Bernardo do Campo, a city in the Sao Paulo metropolitan region, began production of electric hybrid buses and trucks three years ago, and the first ones off the line have already been put to the test.

A hybrid vehicle is any that utilises a combination of two or more sources of motive energy. In the case of the Eletra buses, it is electricity and diesel.

The passengers on a busy route in Sao Paulo will be riding one of 16 of these new buses by the end of the year. The electric hybrid vehicles emit 90 percent less exhaust and 70 percent less carbon monoxide, a note of relief for one of the most polluted cities in the world.

Eletra has exported three of these city buses to Chile, whose capital, Santiago, represents a major market for mass transit alternatives, due to its own air pollution problems. Deals are also being negotiated in Italy, Mexico, New Zealand and Panama.

But there is a long way to go before Latin American cities fully adopt hybrid vehicles for public transportation. The initial outlay is more costly than for diesel-burning buses and there are no tax incentives in place to promote the use of "clean" energy.

This new automotive technology, announced in Japan in 1998, now drives some 200,000 cars manufactured by industry giants Honda and Toyota. There are also some U.S. hybrid models that are gradually gaining a piece of that market.

"There has been a paradigm shift," says Jayme Buarque de Holanda, director of the National Energy Efficiency Institute (INEE), the Rio-based non-governmental organisation that has taken off with the hybrid vehicle idea and promoted it through seminars and public presentations.

The electric hybrid bus is driven by an electric motor, but also has a generator to produce additional electricity, which gives it greater independence than other electricity-driven forms of mass transit because it does not need the overhead cables that limit the range of electrical trolleys or the electrified tracks of light-rail trains.

The very quiet motor of the hybrid vehicle burns the same diesel fuel used by conventional buses, but pollutes much less because it operates with "fixed rotation", without the increased power demands of combustion engines for start-up and inclines, Eletra’s technical director Antonio Vicente explained in a conversation with IPS.

A battery accumulates the energy saved when the traction force is not needed, such as when the car or bus is travelling on a decline or flat road, or when slowing, Vicente said.

As a result, the generator can be less powerful and smaller, consuming at least 20 percent less fuel, reducing by the same portion the emissions of carbon dioxide, the main contributor to the greenhouse effect.

The electric hybrid vehicle is really a rediscovery, because the technologies used – traction and electrical generation – have been around for more than a century, INEE’s Buarque de Holanda told IPS.

And it is apparently arriving late, but the truth is that hybrid vehicles were only recently made commercially viable as a result of electronic and computer technologies, he said. The operation of the car or bus requires computers for perfect control of the motor, power and timing to use and accumulate electricity.

This was too expensive before the major advances in the applied technologies were made, added the expert.

Furthermore, there were expectations that hydrogen would be the better successor to petroleum in economic and environmental terms, and only now are experts recognising the development of that alternative will take many more years, said Eletra chief Vicente.

Meanwhile, the hybrid vehicle provides an immediate solution for reducing ur ban air pollution and fossil fuel use.

The price of an Eletra bus is 20 to 30 percent higher than a conventional diesel-fuelled bus, but within three years that difference is compensated by operating costs that are 30 percent less, because it burns less fuel and needs fewer parts need replacing, and the bus itself lasts twice as long, Vicente said.

The company hopes to conquer several markets abroad, beyond expanding within Brazil, because it can sell the buses for 150,000 dollars, which is less than half the price of the hybrid buses manufactured in the United States.

Enthusiasm for the new hybrid technology is shared by Luiz Pecorelli Peres, professor at the University of Rio de Janeiro State, who two years ago founded the Electric Vehicle Research Group, having written his doctoral thesis on the topic.

Pecorelli Peres commented that the hybrid engines are part of a global trend, responding to market demand and environmental requirements, and the automobile industry in general will have to give in to "this inevitable fact."

Buarque de Holanda noted that, in environmental terms, the benefits of hybrid vehicles could be improved using alcohol and vegetable oils for fuel instead of petroleum derivatives.

The advantages for transportation constitute the first phase. Hybrid motors could ultimately serve as a backup generator of electricity for homes and hospitals, said the INEE director, who added that three small motors could produce sufficient energy for a building with 40 flats.

Promoting energy efficiency – "excellent" in the hybrid engine – is the mission of the non-governmental INEE.

Buarque de Holanda says research is also underway to take advantage of vehicle energy that is dispersed in the form of engine heat, which he calculates to represent "a third of the fuel consumed."

By channelling the heat into energy production, it could ultimately run air-cooling units, he said.