Downtown traffic in Mexico City. The electrification of transportation is a challenge in this Latin American country, where over 58 million vehicles are in circulation. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO, Feb 26 2025 (IPS)

Mexico has seen several attempts at assembling electric vehicles (EVs), powered by rechargeable batteries, which have faced challenges related to industrial scale, supply chains, and competitiveness

These issues also complicate the new state production plan for the Taruk bus (meaning “roadrunner” in Yaqui) and the lightweight Olinia car (meaning “movement” in Nahuatl), based on the country’s long automotive experience and a growing market. The plan was formally announced in January by President Claudia Sheinbaum.

Experts consulted by IPS praised the initiative but warned of significant technological, regulatory, and infrastructure challenges in a country where transportation generates nearly a third of all polluting emissions. Cleaning up this sector would benefit urban health.“Asians, especially the Chinese, have developed very advanced technology; they are 15 years ahead of us. There’s no comparison. Government support is minimal and doesn’t meet the huge demand of the automotive sector. If Mexico wants to compete with those who have taken over the electric market, it has to invest,” Gustavo Jiménez

“Asians, especially the Chinese, have developed very advanced technology; they are 15 years ahead of us. There is no comparison. Government support is extremely minimal and does not meet the significant demands of the automotive sector,” said Gustavo Jiménez, director of the private Grupo E-mobilitas, which specializes in electromobility consulting.

During his dialogue with IPS, he emphasized that “if Mexico wants to compete with those who have taken over the electric market, it has to invest.”

Information reviewed by IPS shows that the development of the Taruk bus is more advanced, while the Olinia car still lacks a defined strategy. This comes at a challenging time for the sector due to threats of extraordinary tariffs by U.S. President Donald Trump on vehicles assembled in Mexico.

Additionally, the installation of EV plants by U.S.-based Tesla  and China’s Build Your Dreams (BYD) has been temporarily halted. BYD faces tariffs imposed by the U.S. government on Asian products entering its market.

In fact, prototypes of a Mexican electric bus were designed in 2024 as part of the project “Development of a Mexican Electric Public Transport Bus and Study for the Implementation of Electromobility in Cities to Boost the Country’s Lithium Value Chain.”

The electromobility project is being carried out by the new Secretariat of Science, Humanities, Technologies, and Innovation (Secihti) and private Mexican companies Dina and MegaFlux, which already manufacture electric buses and trucks.

The initiative for electric buses, launched in 2023 with a budget of around US$900,000, aims to accelerate the introduction of Mexican-made units with indigenous technology, strengthen the national EV industry, and support the growth of this segment, given the urgent need to clean up transportation.

The Taruk model will be assembled in the state of Hidalgo, near Mexico City, and benefits from an existing production platform. Its projected weight is 12.5 tons, with a battery discharge rate of around 90% and a range of 180 to 361 kilometers, making it ideal for urban environments.

In comparison, the 50 buses introduced by the capital’s government in October 2024, imported from the Chinese brand Yutong, have a range of 300 kilometers.

In January, President Claudia Sheinbaum announced the state production of the Olinia electric car, designed for short trips. However, the project faces significant technological, economic, and commercial challenges. Credit: Government of Mexico

Competition

The Olinia cars, whose plant will operate in the state of Puebla, bordering Mexico City, has a budget of 1.22 million dollars. They are designed for short trips, with prices ranging from US$ 4,383 to 7,300 and are expected to hit the market by 2026. In comparison, Tesla had planned to invest $5 billion in an assembly plant set to begin operations in 2025.

The Secihti, along with the National Polytechnic Institute and the Mexican Institute of Technology, still lack detailed development plans for the three Olinia models, including a small van.

Currently, automotive companies in Mexico, the world’s seventh-largest producer of light vehicles and third-largest exporter, do not receive subsidies to accelerate the introduction of electric vehicles.

Leticia Pineda, regional leader for Mexico and Canada at the non-governmental  International Council on Clean Transportation, based in Washington, believes the government understands the opportunity to integrate into a valuable supply chain and build economies of scale.

“This is a great opportunity for Mexico to transform its automotive industry, develop manufacturing capabilities to produce vehicles with higher national content. This value addition is a great opportunity to integrate further into this supply chain,” she told IPS.

In 2021, Mexico joined the Glasgow Pact on Electromobility during the climate summit in the Scottish city, which sets a voluntary target of 50% of light vehicle sales being electric and plug-in hybrid by 2030 and 100% by 2040—goals that are difficult to achieve under current conditions.

A prototype of the Taruk electric bus (meaning “roadrunner” in the Yaqui language), designed by the Mexican government and private companies for urban environments in this Latin American country. Credit: Dina

For independent consultant Víctor Alvarado, the intersection of mobility and electricity generation, dominated by fossil fuels in Mexico, must be considered.

“What’s announced but not fully realized is electromobility, and what’s happening is the electrification of heavy and light transportation. Given the composition of the energy matrix, transportation will continue to generate emissions if we don’t commit to electric vehicles,” he told IPS.

The new bus and car ventures will face an increasingly competitive domestic market dominated by U.S., European, and Chinese brands, which have reported significant expansion since 2023.

In recent years, sales of electric and hybrid vehicles, which run on gasoline and electric batteries, have grown in this country of 129 million people, where over 58 million vehicles, mostly cars, are in circulation.

In 2024, EV sales increased by 71%, from 14,172 units in 2023 to 24,283 the following year. The hybrid segment saw the most growth, with sales jumping from 60,146 to 100,020 between the two years, a 66% increase.

The same trend was seen in passenger vehicles, where fossil fuel-powered units, mainly diesel, still dominate. Hybrid model sales surged from just two in 2023 to 670 last year, while electric vehicle sales grew by 16%, from 252 to 294.

However, electric vehicle projects are happening in a legal vacuum. The national strategy, which outlined specific actions and goals, was ready in 2023 but has not been published. While the 2022 General Law on Mobility and Road Safety promotes sustainable transportation, it does not address electric mobility.

Initially, electric mobility in Mexico has the advantage of lithium deposits in rocks and clays, a key element for rechargeable batteries, especially in the northern state of Sonora.

However, environmentalists argue that these deposits are potentially unviable environmentally, economically, and technologically due to water consumption in extraction and high processing costs.

Sales of hybrid and electric vehicles have been growing in recent years in Mexico, though at a slower pace than needed to transition to low-emission transportation. Graph: Amia

Background

The cases of the Mexican private corporation Zacua and Bolivia’s Quantum Motors, whose partner in Mexico is Megaflux, are also illustrative.

The former, located in Puebla, has sold a few dozen units since 2019, with a cost per unit of around $25,000, practically the same as other foreign brands.

Meanwhile, Quantum has sold over 500 cars in Bolivia, El Salvador, Mexico, Paraguay, and Peru since 2019, with their models priced between US$ 6,000 and 8,000, a range similar to what is expected for Olinia’s vehicles.

Mexico has at least 39 automotive plants, including three EV assemblers. Of these, 22 manufacture vehicles and are located in central and northern Mexico, attracted by access to the U.S. market, the main export destination, under the free trade agreement shared with Canada.

Since 2018, Mexico City, with nearly nine million inhabitants and about 24 million in the metropolitan area, has made progress in electrifying public transportation, with units in the Metrobus system and bus routes.

Additionally, cities like Guadalajara, the capital of the western state of Jalisco, and Mérida, the capital of the southeastern state of Yucatán, have promoted similar projects.

The National Strategy for Industrialization and Shared Prosperity, also known as Plan Mexico and announced in January, includes 10 electromobility projects in public transportation across 10 states, with an undefined budget.

Experts consulted by IPS agreed on the importance of comprehensive regulation covering energy sources, infrastructure deployment, vehicle safety, and consumer rights.

For Jiménez, public-private partnerships with Mexican companies and a focus on public transportation are advisable.

“There needs to be significant production capacity to leverage technological advantages and drive industrial development. Electromobility is positioned as a potential solution to health problems, but we must think about public transportation to optimize time, modernize fleets, and reduce environmental impact,” he stated.

Pineda also agreed that delays in the process could result in high costs.

“There’s a lack of joint effort and government support for this transition. These are long-term transformations that require government commitment to provide certainty for investments and the entire supply chain, ensuring progress in electromobility. There needs to be an ecosystem that provides clarity on the direction, so projects don’t remain pilot initiatives,” he emphasized.

The podium at the conference in Argentina’s lower house of Congress, where representatives of UN Environment assured that public transport, which in Latin America has the highest rate of use in the world per capita, will lead the transition to electric mobility. Credit: Daniel Gutman / IPS

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, May 31 2018 (IPS)

With 80 percent of the population living in urban areas and a vehicle fleet that is growing at the fastest rate in the world, Latin America has the conditions to begin the transition to electric mobility – but public policies are not, at least for now, up to the task.

That is the assessment of UN Environment, according to a conference that two of its officials gave on May 29 in Argentina’s lower house of Congress, in Buenos Aires.

The shift towards electric mobility, however, will come inexorably in a few years, and in Latin America it will begin with public passenger transport, said the United Nations agency’s regional climate change coordinator, Gustavo Máñez, who used two photographs of New York’s Fifth Avenue to illustrate his prediction.

The first photo, from 1900, showed horse-drawn carriages. The second was taken only 13 years later and only cars were visible."As at other times in history, this time the transition will happen very quickly. I am seeing all over the world that car manufacturers are looking to join this wave of electric mobility because they know that, if not, they are going to be left out of the market." -- Gustavo Máñez

“As at other times in history, this time the transition will happen very quickly. I am seeing all over the world that car manufacturers are looking to join this wave of electric mobility because they know that, if not, they are going to be left out of the market,” said Máñez.

Projections indicate that Latin America could, over the next 25 years, see its car fleet triple, to more than 200 million vehicles by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

This growth, if the transition to sustainable mobility does not pick up speed, will seriously jeopardise compliance with the intended nationally determined contributions adopted under the global Paris Agreement on climate change, according to Máñez.

The reason is that the transport sector is responsible for nearly 20 percent of the region’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

In this regard, the official praised the new president of Costa Rica, Carlos Alvarado, who called for the elimination of fossil fuel use and for the decarbonisation of the economy. Máñez also highlighted that “Chile, Colombia and Mexico are working to tax transport for its carbon emissions.

“This is an example of public policies aimed at generating demand for electric vehicles,” said Máñez, while another positive case is that of Uruguay, one of the countries in the region that has made the most progress in electric mobility, stimulating it with tax benefits.

“But the region still needs to do a great deal of work developing incentives for electric mobility and removing subsidies for fossil fuels,” he added.

In this respect, he asked Latin America to look to the example of Scandinavian countries, where electric vehicles already play an important role, thanks to the fact that their drivers enjoy parking privileges or use the lanes for public transport, in addition to other sustained measures.

There are very disparate realities in the region.

Thus, while electric vehicles have been sold in Brazil for years, the country hosting the conference is lagging far behind and only began selling one model this year.

An electric bus parked on a downtown street in Montevideo. Credit: Inés Acosta / IPS

In fact, the meeting was led by Argentine lawmaker Juan Carlos Villalonga, of the governing alliance Cambiemos and author of a bill that promotes the installation of electric vehicle charging stations, which is currently not on the legislative agenda.

“The first objective is to generate a debate in society about sustainable mobility,” said Villalonga, who acknowledged that Argentina is lagging behind other countries in the region in the transition to clean energy.

Argentina only started a couple of years ago developing non-conventional renewable energies, which in the country’s electricity generation mix are still negligible.

As for electric mobility, the government of the city of Buenos Aires hopes to put eight experimental buses into operation by the end of the year, as a pilot plan, in a fleet of 13,000 buses.

Combating climate change is not the only reason why electric mobility should be encouraged.

“Health is another powerful reason, because internal combustion engines generate a lot of air pollution. In Argentina alone, almost 15,000 people die prematurely each year due to poor air quality,” said José Dallo, head of the UN Environment’s Office for the Southern Cone, based in Montevideo.

“There is also the issue of energy security, as electricity prices are more stable than the price of oil,” he added.

In 2016, UN Environment presented an 84-page report entitled “Electric Mobility. Opportunities for Latin America,” which noted the change would mean a reduction of 1.4 gigatons in carbon dioxide emissions, responsible for 80 percent of GHG emissions, and savings of 85 billion dollars in fuels until 2050.

The report acknowledges that among the region’s obstacles are fossil fuel subsidies “and a lower electricity supply than in developed countries, where the boom in electric mobility has been concentrated so far.”

It also notes that Latin America is the region with the highest use of buses per person in the world, and that public transport “has a strategic potential to spearhead electric mobility.”

Along these lines, the experience of Chile through the Consortium Electric Mobility, a mixed initiative with the participation of the Ministry of Transport and scientific institutions from Chile and Finland, was also shared during the conference in Buenos Aires.

Engineer Gianni López, former director of the government’s National Environment Commission and a member of the Mario Molina Research and Development Centre, said that “in Chile the decision has already been taken to move public transport towards electric mobility.”

He explained that there will be 120 electric buses operating next year in Santiago and that the goal is 1,500 by 2025 – more than 25 percent of a total fleet of nearly 7,000 public transportation units.

“There are many aspects that make it easier to start with public buses than private cars,” Lopez said.

“On the one hand, buses run many hours a day so the return on investment is much faster; on the other hand, since they have fixed routes, it is easier to install recharging systems; and autonomy is not a problem because you know exactly how far they are going to travel each day,” he said.

One example of this is Uruguay, where electric taxis have been operating since 2014, and since 2016 a private mass transit company has a regular service with electric buses. In addition, a 400-km “green route,” with refueling stations every 60 km, was inaugurated last December.

As for the cost of electric vehicles, Máñez assured that China, which leads the production and sale of electric vehicles, is now close to reaching cost parity with conventional vehicles.

In this sense, the official also spoke of the need for Latin America to develop a technology that is currently underdeveloped.

He highlighted the case of Argentina, which is not only a producer of conventional vehicles, but in the north of the country has world-renowned reserves of lithium, a mineral used in batteries for electric vehicles.

The question is that lithium is exported as a primary product because this South American country has not developed the technology to manufacture and assemble the batteries locally.

A K9 electric bus parked on a street in downtown Montevideo. Credit: Inés Acosta/IPS

By Inés Acosta
MONTEVIDEO, Mar 24 2014 (IPS)

Uruguay plans to gradually replace oil-based fuels with electric energy in its public transport system, and is currently assessing the costs and benefits of the shift.

Tests indicate that the running costs of electric buses can be six- to eight-fold lower than for diesel buses.

For the last two years, studies have been under way on the potential benefits of adding electric vehicles to the public transport fleet in Montevideo, where half the country’s 3.3 million people live.

In late 2013, performance and range trials were carried out on an E6 model car and a K9 model bus made by the Chinese company BYD. The results were presented on Mar. 13.

The economic analysis of the performance of the electric vehicles, carried out by the city government, was positive. But mechanisms must be designed to face the initial investment and redefine the scope of subsidies and taxes.

The overall economic advantage of an electric bus over one running on diesel is 1.7 to one, according to this study, which took into account costs of purchase, maintenance and operation of different types of vehicles under the present subsidies and taxes.

For taxis, the difference is 1.8 to one between electric and gasoline-fuelled vehicles, and 1.4 to one between electric and diesel taxis.

Electric motors expend six times less energy than diesel motors. But there is a state subsidy of 65 percent on diesel fuel for buses, so unless the subsidy structure is changed, bus companies will not find it profitable to switch to electricity.

The initiative is part of Uruguay’s energy policy, which aims for half of the country’s energy mix to be made up of renewable sources by 2015, much of that wind energy.

The Electric Mobility Group, made up of several national bodies and the Montevideo city government, has worked since 2012 on the introduction of this technology, which has the advantage of zero greenhouse gas emissions.

The electric vehicles in question function with a bank of lithium iron phosphate batteries, which are biodegradable and do not include heavy metals. When fully charged, the cars and buses have ranges of 300 and 250 kilometres, respectively.

Charging them takes a 10-kilowatt power source, while Uruguayan homes are usually supplied with two to six kilowatts of power.

Electric vehicles cost up to five times more than those using conventional fuels in Uruguay. An electric bus costs 500,000 dollars and a car 60,000 dollars. But operating and maintenance costs are only 10 percent of those for diesel motors.

The national energy director, Ramón Méndez, told Tierramérica that fully charging a car battery would cost 10 dollars at standard Uruguayan rates.

He also said the country would be able to absorb the additional energy consumption, as by 2015 it would become an exporter of electricity.

Since 2005, “Uruguay has installed as much new electricity generating capacity as it did in the previous 100 years of history of its energy industry,” Méndez said.

Transport consumes one-third of the country’s energy resources. “Over two billion dollars a year are spent on fuel,” he said. For this reason, measures taken “in this sector could mean hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in savings for the country,” Méndez said.

Electric vehicles “are the way ahead for the world in general and Uruguay in particular,” he said.

Transport is currently dependent on fossil fuels, but once electric vehicles are introduced it would be based on sources like wind energy, biomass and photovoltaic energy.

“That means lower costs and greater sovereignty,” stressed the head of the National Energy Directorate.

“Unless we strike oil in our country, instead of depending on what we have to import at high prices with complete uncertainty, we can guarantee our energy supply by installing more wind parks, and at the same time we can satisfy transport needs,” he said.

But further adjustments are also needed.

Uruguay spends 100 million dollars a year on diesel subsidies for public transport, Néstor Campal, the city government’s director of transport, told Tierramérica.

“If these funds were spent instead on, say, improving infrastructure for electric vehicles, which have lower operating costs, we would gain a technology with a great many environmental and other benefits,” he said.

In his view, the law should be changed “so that subsidies are applied in a balanced way to both systems.”

Transport Minister Enrique Pintado said “transport subsidies cannot be based on the contradiction that ‘the more you spend the more you are subsidised’; they should instead reward reductions in consumption.”

Bus fares “should come down not because of subsidies, but due to lower real prices. That means much more efficient management of bus companies and lower energy, parts and unit costs,” he said.

“We are laying the foundations for the next departmental (provincial) and national governments to be capable of bringing to fruition what we are launching today,” Pintado concluded at the presentation of the report on the evaluation of the electric vehicles.

Tax costs are another aspect that needs to be reviewed in order to promote electric transport.

Import duties on electric buses are 23 percent, compared to six percent for diesel buses. In addition, diesel buses are exempt from the domestic tax known as IMESI.

In contrast, imported electric taxis pay a preferential IMESI rate of 5.75 percent, compared to 11.5 percent for diesel taxis.

The Finance Ministry will be joining the Electric Mobility Group to contribute to decisions on tax benefits to promote the new technology.

This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

The Empire State Building viewed at night. Credit: NLNY/cc by 2.0

By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Mar 19 2013 (IPS)

As usual, midtown Manhattan is packed with whisper-quiet cars and trams while thousands walk the streets listening to the birds of spring sing amongst the gleaming, grime-free skyscrapers in the crystal-clear morning air.

Welcome to New York City in April 2030.I think the public will be 100 percent behind this, if they know about it.

This is not a fantasy. It is a perfectly doable goal, said Stanford University energy expert Mark Jacobson. In fact, the entire state of New York could be powered by wind, water and sunlight based on a detailed plan Jacobson co-authored.

It’s not only doable, powering New York on green energy is “sustainable and inexpensive” and would save lives and health costs, Jacobson told IPS.

Each year, air pollution kills 4,000 people in New York State and costs the public 33 billion dollars in health costs, according to the study Jacobson co-authored with experts from all over the U.S. It will be published in the journal Energy Policy.

“Converting to wind, water and sunlight is feasible, will stabilise costs of energy and will produce jobs while reducing health and climate damage,” said Jacobson.

Under the plan, 40 percent of New York State’s energy would come from local wind power, 38 percent from local solar and the remainder from a combination of hydroelectric, geothermal, tidal and wave energy.

All vehicles would run on battery-electric power and/or hydrogen fuel cells. Heating and cooling for homes and businesses would come from air- and ground-source heat pumps, geothermal heat pumps, heat exchangers and backup electric resistance heaters – replacing natural gas and oil. Water heaters would be powered by the same heat pumps while solar hot water preheaters would provide hot water for homes.

High temperatures for industrial processes would be obtained with electricity and hydrogen combustion.

All of this can be accomplished with existing technology. The latest electric cars can travel 300 kilometres between charges, said Jacobson.

The significant costs of building renewable energy power plants, buying vehicles, heat pumps and other equipment are more than made up over time through savings in health costs and elimination of fuel costs by not having to buy any coal, oil or gas. The break-even point would be between 10 and 15 years, the study estimates.

The study also found that because green electricity is more efficient than burning fuels, New York’s end-use power demand would be 37 percent lower.

“Electric vehicles are five times more energy efficient than gasoline-powered cars and buses,” Jacobson said.

Electric vehicles convert 90 percent of the electrical energy from the grid to power at the wheels while conventional gasoline vehicles only convert about 20-25 percent, while the rest is lost as heat and noise. Coal and oil-fired electric power plants average just 33 percent efficiency and are major sources of air pollution and global warming.

Pollution costs from burning fossil fuels have largely been underestimated, according to new research. Canadian researchers found that the health cost to the public of driving a car or truck is 300 to 800 dollars per year per vehicle.

The public’s conception and official costs of pollution may be drastically undervalued, said Amir Hakami at Carleton University in Ottawa.

“While reducing emissions from vehicles and power plants is costly, not reducing emissions also costs money. Our research suggests that ignoring pollution will cost much more in the long term,” said Hakami in a statement.

When the sun doesn’t shine or wind doesn’t blow, there are many ways to match energy supply with demand, the study found. All electrical grids rely on a number of power sources and fossil-fuelled and nuclear power plants are taken off grid sometimes for months and years for repairs. Geographically-dispersed renewables can be networked with hydroelectric power to fill in remaining gaps. Energy can be also be stored in various ways including as heat, water pumped uphill, and batteries.

Improvements in energy efficiency would make New York’s conversion to 100 percent green energy easier, faster and less costly, Jacobson acknowledged.

Governments have invested very little in improving energy efficiency. The majority of research investment is devoted to generating more energy, said Charlie Wilson, a scientist with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenberg, Austria.

Creating a low-cost, high efficiency refrigerator would do much to reduce energy and reduce carbon emissions, Wilson said.

“There are also enormous energy savings potential in buildings,” Wilson told IPS.

But politicians don’t think building retrofits are sexy so public money goes into new power plants. The market won’t drive retrofits because the cost of energy is too low in most countries, he said.

Changing this won’t be easy. By far the world’s biggest corporations are the fossil fuel energy and power producers, who have enormous political influence, he said.

Leadership is needed to create a clean and healthy, pollution-free New York City by 2030, said Jacobson. “I think the public will be 100 percent behind this, if they know about it.”

“The economics of this plan make sense,” said Anthony Ingraffea, a Cornell engineering professor and a co-author of the study. “Now it is up to the political sphere.”

In a megacity like the Mexican capital, plagued by air pollution and traffic jams, carsharing and carpooling initiatives offer obvious advantages in addition to the economic benefits enjoyed by users.

Jimena Pardo’s company even offers electric cars that can be recharged in four hours. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Two of the most popular new initiatives of this kind are Aventones and Carrot, small companies founded by young recent university graduates.

Aventones takes its name from “aventón”, the Spanish word for hitching a lift. The company’s creation was spurred by “the excess of traffic and the inefficient use of cars,” in the Mexican capital, said Ignacio Cordero, a 28-year-old industrial engineer and graduate of the Universidad Iberoamericana (UIA), a Jesuit university in Mexico City.

“The idea is to promote a culture of shared car use,” he told IPS, which in this case is achieved through carpooling.

Cordero joined forces with Cristina Palacios, a business administration graduate from UIA, and Alberto Padilla, an industrial engineer trained at the Monterrey Institute of Technology, to create the company in 2010.

Their services are offered to “communities of trust” – companies, universities and government institutions – with an average of 200 or 250 people, who are matched up through an online system that searches for compatible routes, travel times and empty seats in cars. The service’s users not only share a vehicle – they also share the ride together.

The client organisation is charged a fee of 8,000 dollars a year, which includes training courses.

The software used was created by the company’s founders. It is currently utilised by 5,752 users and 27 clients – 23 in Mexico and four in Chile, where the company began operating in January.

Carpooling has become well established in countries like Germany, Spain, Canada and the United States, but is just beginning to catch on in Latin America. Similar services are being developed in Argentina, Chile and Brazil.

Carsharing is another means of multi-user car transport, popular in Germany, Spain, Canada and the United States and now offered by Carrot in Mexico, Zazcar in Brazil and SigoCar in Costa Rica.

“There is a growing trend of providing more options for getting around. This has a significant positive impact on the environment and fosters multi-modal transportation,” said industrial engineer Jimena Pardo, 28, a UIA graduate, who co-founded Carrot in 2012 with Diego Solórzano, a graduate in actuarial science from the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico.

The company, which is affiliated with the international CarSharing Association, offers its clients 40 vehicles, including three electric cars, and has already attracted 1,600 users.

Clients register through a website and pay a fee in accordance with how frequently they need the use of a car, Pardo told IPS. Occasional users pay around 23 dollars annually and seven dollars an hour, plus 23 cents of a dollar for each kilometre travelled.

A frequent driver pays around eight dollars a month, five dollars an hour, and 23 cents per kilometre. Users can pick up a car at one station and leave it at another when they are finished.

According to Carrot, each one of its shared vehicles keeps 20 private cars off the roads.

These new means of transportation are one of the most visible forms of “collaborative consumption”, a movement aimed at increasing the use and shelf life of consumer goods and resources by promoting their use by numerous different people, reducing the time that they sit unused but continue to generate expenses.

These solutions are more than welcome in a city like the Mexican capital and its metropolitan area, which have a combined population of 20.4 million. According to the Centre for Sustainable Transport, the inhabitants of this megacity carry out a total of 49 million trips daily, 53 percent on public transport and 17 percent in private vehicles.

The Transportation Sustainability Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley estimated that as of October 2012, carsharing was operating in 27 countries and five continents, with an estimated 1,788,000 members sharing over 43,550 vehicles, and was planned in seven additional countries worldwide.

The “Propuesta de sistema de vehículos compartidos basado en un sistema de información geográfica” (Proposal for a carsharing system based on a geographic information system), co-authored in 2011 by Luis Guadarrama, Daniel Santiesteban and Javier García at the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico, states that “the expected benefits of a carsharing system include a reduction in the use of individual vehicles and the number of these vehicles in circulation.”

“Our goal is for carsharing to become a habit, and for our service to be a social experience in every way,” said Cordero.

Aventones states that it has prevented the emission of 115 tons of carbon dioxide and saved 750,015 kilometres and 10,586 hours in car travel and 71,430 litres of gasoline.

Carsharing systems “can be replicated in medium-sized and large cities that have urban transportation, a high population density and a mix of residential and office areas,” said Pardo, whose company employs nine people and operates stations in the largest Mexico City neighbourhoods.

Both initiatives are self-financed and have ambitious plans for the future.

Aventones, which employs a staff of 10, hopes to begin operations this year in Bogotá and attract 25,000 new users, thanks to financing provided by its new partner, Venture Institute. Its software team is developing an open application based on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Carrot, which has also partnered up with Venture Institute, plans to begin operations in Toluca and Puebla, cities near the Mexican capital, raise its membership to between 3,000 and 5,000 users, expand its fleet to 100 vehicles, and open up more stations in different neighbourhoods of the city.

Both organisations also hope to forge closer ties with the leftist local government of Mexico City, which is promoting the Metrobús (a bus rapid transit system using dedicated lanes), a public bike sharing system, and an electric taxi programme in the city’s historic centre.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the World Bank.

Electric cars reduce urban air pollution. Credit: Tinus de Jager/IPS

By Matthew Charles Cardinale
ATLANTA, Aug 29 2012 (IPS)

A 120-million-dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to the nationwide Electric Vehicle (EV) Project aims to promote and expand the use of electric vehicles in the United States.

The EV Project has a goal of handing out 14,000 free electric vehicle chargers, including commercial host stations as well as home smart chargers, that households can use to charge electric vehicles at home.

The programme is currently being run by a company called Ecotality in nine states: Arizona, California, Georgia, Illinois, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and Washington.

The grant is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the economic stimulus package enacted by President Barack Obama and Congress to invest government dollars in programmes to create jobs, and, among other things, make green investments.

Free smart chargers are available to anybody who purchases a Nissan LEAF or Chevy Volt, the two most common models of electric vehicles, while businesses can host commercial chargers for free.

Shifting towards renewable energy

Proponents of the programme point out that increasing the use of electric vehicles in the United States will reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

However, the electricity still must be produced somehow, and in many cases still, it is done through coal and nuclear power plants.

A recent report by Environment Georgia has found that nevertheless, switching from gasoline-powered cars to electric ones still has benefits in reducing global warming, even in a state such as Georgia, which is far behind other states in moving to renewable energy.

According to the report, over 30,000 electric vehicles are already on the road in the United States. If national projected electric vehicle sales are met, 628,773 metric tonnes of global-warming emissions will be prevented each year, based on the current energy grid across the United States.

And if the vehicles are powered solely with renewable energy, the report projects that these emissions could be reduced by more than 1.9 million metric tonnes each year.

“There are still (pollution) savings. Obviously you would see greater savings if the grid mix were to change and improve,” Jennette Gayer, executive director of Environment Georgia, told IPS.

“The great benefit to electric cars is…that they’re the only vehicle that over time gets cleaner,” Ben Echols, electric transportation program manager for Georgia Power, told IPS.

“A normal internal combustion vehicle – the cleanest it’s going to be is the day you drive off the lot….The older it gets, the dirtier it gets,” Echols said.

“The electric vehicle is going to get cleaner. We are, as a company, going to continue to lower our emissions. We’re required by federal regulations to add cleaner generation to our mix. Our mix is going to get cleaner over time,” Echols said.

Partnering to save

Georgia Power is one of the industry groups that is partnering with Ecotality. The company is offering a reduced energy rate for customers who use most of their energy at night; the rate is designed for customers with electric vehicles who are charging their cars between the hours of 11 pm and 7 am, which are considered extremely off-peak hours.

Utility companies undoubtedly stand to gain by promoting electric vehicles, which, after all, boost demand for electricity. But even though consumers must pay for electricity, the cost must also be compared to the prospect of paying for gasoline instead.

The Environment Georgia report pointed out some of the many costs of relying on oil, recalling the British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010 along the Gulf of Mexico. Electric cars have the potential to reduce such costs by shifting the reliance onto renewable energy.

“I think that electric vehicles actually help the deployment of renewables,” Gayer explained. “If we go to electric vehicles, it will be easier to go later on to renewables.”

Cleaning up the grid

Yet there are risks. “If you do a huge roll-out of electric vehicles and don’t change the grid, Georgia Power and companies can use it as excuse to push really dirty proposals. But we’re headed as a country overall – not necessarily in Georgia – we’re heading in the right direction,” Gayer said. “There are (Environmental Protection Agency) rules coming down the pike that will continue to push towards cleaning up our grid.”

Electric vehicles are indeed making a comeback. A 2006 documentary, “Who Killed the Electric Car,” shows how the oil and automobile industry conspired to prevent an electric car model, the General Motors EV1, from becoming popular in the mid-1990’s.

By comparison, the success of electric vehicles today is a stark turnabout from nearly twenty years ago, when the EV1 died young. Environment Georgia reported that in 2011, the first year electric vehicles came back on the market in the United States, over 17,000 were purchased.