View of the interior of the Reborn plant, where electric buses are manufactured, for now for the state-owned copper company Codelco, to which a hundred units are to be delivered in December, destined for the El Teniente mine, the largest underground copper mine in the world, with some 3,000 tunnels. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Jul 15 2022 (IPS)

The manufacture in Chile of an electric bus christened Queltehue, a wading bird native to the country, is another step towards electromobility and in the fight against pollution that triggers frequent environmental crises and smog emergencies in Santiago and other cities.

The National Electromobility Strategy, updated and relaunched in 2021, aims for 100 percent of the public transport vehicle fleet and 40 percent of private cars to be electric by 2050. By 2035, internal combustion engine cars will no longer be sold in this country.

That means that in less than 30 years some five million vehicles will switch from fuel to electricity, avoiding the emission of some 11 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year and reducing spending on oil and petroleum products by more than 3.3 billion dollars a year.

Electric mobility can also be clean and with zero emissions, if this long narrow South American country sandwiched between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean takes advantage of its enormous potential to produce solar and wind energy thanks to the abundant sunlight in the Atacama Desert and the strong winds in coastal areas and in the southern region of Magallanes.

However, much remains to be done because there are currently only about 2,750 electric vehicles in circulation in Chile and there are only about 310 public chargers to serve them.

A notable stride forward in the last four years has been the increase in the number of electric public transport buses, which now account for 20 percent of the 6,713 buses that serve passengers in Santiago, where 7.1 million of the country’s 19.1 million inhabitants live.

At the Los Espinos Electroterminal, in the municipality of Peñalolén in the Andes foothills bordering Santiago, the electric buses of the private company Metbus begin and end their routes through the Chilean capital. “We noticed that the passengers are more relaxed,” company inspector José Bazán, who traveled twice to Shenzhen, China to buy the electric buses, told IPS. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

In May, Minister of Transport and Telecommunications Juan Carlos Muñoz confirmed that another 70 electric buses will serve some 50,000 daily passengers in the working-class municipalities of La Pintana, San Joaquín and Puente Alto, on the southern outskirts of Santiago.

“Bringing electromobility and its benefits to sectors that have been left behind by development not only makes a city more sustainable, it makes it more inclusive,” he said at the time.

“Quality transportation is fundamental for people to leave their cars parked and opt for more efficient modes, which will allow us to make Santiago an environmentally friendly city,” Muñoz added.

So far, electric buses for public transport, a sector that is in private hands in Chile, have come from Chinese companies, especially BYD and Foton, but that is expected to change as electric mobility expands.

The strategy not only targets public transportation, but also freight, commercial vehicles and vehicles used in key industries in the local economy, such as mining.

Engineers Ricardo Repenning and Felipe Cevallos, partners in Reborn, pose for a photo in front of their factory in Rancagua, the first in Chile to manufacture and reassemble electric buses, for now for the state copper industry, but with the intention of extending to urban and rural public transport. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

Successful experience in the mines

Felipe Cevallos, a 32-year-old mechanical engineer, and Ricardo Repenning, a 33-year-old electrical engineer, are partners in the Chilean company Reborn Electric Motors, which began by converting diesel vehicles to electric ones, but this year will manufacture 104 electric buses for the El Teniente mine of the state-owned copper company Codelco.

These buses do not emit CO2 or make noise and can safely carry 24 passengers each.

“We have successfully carried passengers a total of 210,000 kilometers in the mine in difficult conditions of mud and salt, steep slopes and high levels of humidity,” Cevallos proudly told IPS during a visit to the company’s plant in the municipality of Rancagua, 86 kilometers south of Santiago.

The 3,000-square-meter automotive facility employs 50 people whose average age is 30, and can produce up to 200 vehicles per year.

The buses are made up of 45 percent Chilean parts, while the bodies are brought from Brazil, the engines come from Canada and the batteries are made in China.

“We manufacture the power and control branches, the distribution strip and the low to high voltage domains, the structures, displays and software to run the systems and the engine cooling cycles and other components,” Cevallos said.

A picture of one of the electric buses on the assembly line at the Reborn plant. Each bus contains 45 percent Chilean parts, while the rest are imported from Brazil, Canada and China. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

At El Teniente, the world’s largest underground copper deposit, there are 24 double-gun 150-kw chargers that can charge two Queltehue buses in 40 minutes.

(The scientific name of the Queltehue or Southern Lapwing, the species for which the bus was named, is Vanellus chilensis.)

Other buses operate from Rancagua and another 10 chargers are being installed at the terminal of Transportes Link, the operator of the public transport service, in partnership with Reborn.

“Fast charging requires more power and better splicing. The electrolinera charging station charges faster, but the vehicle must be able to support faster charging,” Repenning explained.

Codelco, the world’s largest copper producer and exporter, is committed to using only electric vehicles to transport workers at El Teniente, which is located under the hill of the same name in the municipality of Machalí, some 120 kilometers from Santiago.

“The 104 buses that we will deliver will transport the workers between their arrival points and locker rooms to the interior of the mine. Each one travels 15 to 20 kilometers, largely through tunnels,” said Repenning.

He added that Reborn manufactures and reassembles electric buses.

“We started out by reconverting diesel buses that had reached the end of their useful life and transforming them into 100 percent electric. In 2020 we started making brand-new 100 percent electric buses in the Rancagua factory,” he explained.

Cables of all colors and sizes are used at the Reborn electric bus plant in the Chilean town of Rancagua. The company is recognized by the international Society of Automotive Engineers. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

The company is now focused on transportation in the mining industry, but its technology can be applied to urban and rural transportation – and that is the direction of its future expansion.

Reborn has been recognized by SAE International, formerly named the Society of Automotive Engineers.

“When the batteries were very heavy, a lot of passenger capacity was lost. Today, batteries have greatly improved their energy density,” and that facilitates the electrification of public transportation, Repenning said.

Pending challenges

Land transportation absorbs about 30 percent of the total energy consumed by Chile and the greenhouse gases it generates represent between 17 and 25 percent of the total gases emitted by this country.

Luciano Ahumada, director of the School of Information Technology and Telecommunications at the Diego Portales University (UDP), told IPS that “electromobility is a tremendous tool, perhaps the most important one, for achieving carbon neutrality and thus making us responsible for our environment.”

Ahumada said that among the biggest problems of electromobility are the high price of vehicles and the lack of confidence among users that they can count on a network that recharges batteries in a timely manner.

The private company Metbus is a pioneer in electromobility in Chile. It brought the first two electric buses from China in 2017. It now operates 1,430 electric buses, the largest fleet in South America, with vehicles equipped with air-conditioning, WIFI, USB and camera systems. At the Electroterminal it installed solar panels to generate the energy it consumes in its offices. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

An electric bus in Chile costs around 300,000 dollars and a car around 50,000 dollars. But the operating cost of both is a third or a quarter of that of combustion engine vehicles.

“The biggest challenge is to generate an incentive for the purchase and production of electric vehicles and to create and install charging infrastructure and a charging management system that is reliable and sustainable,” said Ahumada.

Héctor Novoa, a professor at the UDP Faculty of Architecture who is working on a doctoral thesis on electric mobility, believes that the Chilean electromobility strategy has pros and cons.

“Chile has the largest fleet in the southern hemisphere with electric buses in public transportation,” he noted.

“But its public policy has gone hand in hand with favoring the involvement of actors that have a share of the energy business. Electromobility is also a business model,” Novoa said.

He cited as examples the Copec group of companies, dedicated to forestry, energy and gas stations, and the Chilean subsidiary of the Italian transnational Enel, focused on electricity and gas.

Many young university graduates work at the Reborn company that operates in the city of Rancagua, south of the Chilean capital, where electric buses are assembled for the El Teniente copper mine, but which has a goal of producing buses for urban and rural public transport. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

“Copec has electric vehicle terminals. Where previously the buses were supplied with fuel, now they are sold electricity. Public policy has gone hand in hand with the private sector to secure for it certain parts of the business,” Novoa told IPS.

But the academic regretted that the installation of public electric chargers “has targeted certain upscale neighborhoods and municipalities of Santiago, which points to a strengthening of inequality.

“The charging infrastructure is too limited to allow charging in public places without being exposed to being vandalized,” he acknowledged.

Novoa also called for greater clarity regarding how the city would absorb the new charging infrastructure and make the distribution more egalitarian.

He concurred with Ahumada that “electromobility is a key element for decarbonization” and he also believes that the high price of electric vehicles limits their development.

He stressed, however, that “electromobility is based on an awareness linked to scientific evidence in international forums that brings the ecological and scientific world closer to politics.”

The academic also urged consideration of a largely ignored aspect: the fact that an important part of vehicle emissions comes not from exhaust but from brake pad and tire wear that produces toxic particulate matter.

In saturated zones this fine particulate matter pollutant is significant, Novoa said.

“Climate change has accelerated the transformation processes associated with decarbonizing not only transport, but also other areas linked to industry, such as energy generation,” he said.

Côte d’Ivoire’s economic capital, Abidjan, has developed a public transport strategy, which includes reserving a bus line and several levels of quality service for the middle class and civil servants. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Marc-Andre Boisvert
ABDIJAN, Côte d’Ivoire, Jun 4 2014 (IPS)

Two years ago, it would have taken Catherine Adjoua almost an hour to travel from M’Badon, the isolated fishing area where she lives that has no asphalt roads, to reach her workplace some 13 kilometres away in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire’s economic capital.

“The travel was harsh, and the old buses very uncomfortable,“ she tells IPS.

Thanks to the government’s newly-built asphalt freeway connecting M’Badon to Abidjan, Adjoua’s commute now takes about half an hour — when there is no traffic.

The city, which is divided in two parts by the Ebrie Lagoon, has several congestion points, including two bridges and several overpasses. And now it is also an open construction site.

An overpass linking the bridge to the highway was open for traffic a month ago, and several other roads and overpasses will soon complement the network.

A third bridge is under construction that is set to be inaugurated in December 2014. It was, however, planned in 1995 for traffic of that era but its construction was postponed by the multiple crises affecting the country since then. This West African nation was affected by the recent post-electoral political crisis from 2010 to 2011. More than 3,000 people died in the violence that followed former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo’s refusal to concede victory to current President Allassane Ouattara.

The construction of a fourth bridge will start in the coming months, the government says.

By all appearances, it seems that the vehicle will dictate Abidjan’s development.

“There has been an important increase in vehicle traffic in the last years. With the crises, people who couldn’t afford cars indebted themselves to get one,” explains Pierre Dimba, coordinator of the Presidential Emergency Programmes for Infrastructure, a governmental agency responsible for supervising Côte d’Ivoire’s public works.

Dimba tells IPS that the crises resulted in many households buying two or three cars as they feared insecurity and felt they would be at risk using public transportation.

Abidjan residents also now prefer to live in suburbs, away from central areas that were hotspots of violence during the 2010 to 2011 post-electoral crisis. It resulted in an urban boom, which is yet to be quantified as the country’s first census of 1998 is still ongoing. However it also led to greater congestion on roads that were built well before this suburban development.

But the government has a firm desire to develop public transportation. And not only for those who have cars.

“We have made it a priority to rehabilitate public transport routes first [after the 2010 to 2011 post-electoral crisis]. Then, we decided to increase connections between living and working areas,” explains Dimba.

The impact is already visible for Abidjan’s two million daily commuters. Armand Koffi, a 58-year-old civil servant, can afford a car. But he has a good reason for not driving one: he hates driving.

“Abidjan drivers are crazy and aggressive! I prefer sitting, chatting, or reading my book,” he tells IPS.

He says that the recent work on the roads has reduced his commute to his suburban home by 30 minutes. “And the new buses are comfortable.”

Sotra — the public agency that is 60,2 percent-owned by Côte d’Ivoire’s government and 39,8 percent by a private consortium — has had a monopoly on public transportation within Abidjan since independence in 1960.

Legendary singer Lougah François even sang about all the destinations you can go to with Sotra for 50 CFAs (10 cents) in the 1970s.

After cumulating a deficit over the years, Sotra is set to see better days. The public agency has an investment of 150 billion CFA (about 300 million dollars) and two-thirds of this will go towards providing new buses and boats. The boats operate on Ebrie Lagoon.

So far, it has received about 500 new buses in 2013, with funding for a total of 2,000 buses in 2016, as well as 100 shuttle boats in 2016.

Sotra has made several attempts to increase its appeal to civil servants and the middle class, like Koffi. For 25,000 CFA per month (about 50 dollars), he is able to take an express bus from his office to his neighbourhood, with guaranteed seats. Sotra offers lower prices on normal routes, making the price more accessible to the lower income groups. And it has also modified its lines after making a geo-localisation studies of what are the busiest routes.

“The government has committed resources for further developments,” explains Dimba.

In spite of the expansion plans, Sotra currently owns 20 shuttle boats, running since the 1980s, which offer fast commuting for 100 to 200 CFAs (20 to 40 cents) between four different points on the Ebrie Lagoon.

The government has now allowed private owners to run shuttle boats on the lagoon. Turkish firm Yildirim and Ivorian firm SNEDAI will soon launch 45 shuttle boats. Their business interests amount to an investment of 20 billion CFA (about 41.5 million dollars).

Adjoua hopes that they will open a line between her house in M’Badon and her work. “It would be so much faster!”

But the Ivorian government’s commitment to public transportation went a step further when it announced, a month ago, that an urban train will be built in Abidjan.

“This infrastructure will solve Abidjan’s traffic jam problems. It will heal the city from important economic loss,” said Transport Minister Gaoussou Touré.

The train will cost 650 billion CFA (about 1.4 billion dollars), and will be paid for by a consortium consisting of French group Bouygues and two Korean firms; Dongsan Engineering and Hyundai Rotem. A portion of existing rails will open up for commuters by 2017. About 37 railways will connect the country, with a terminus at Abidjan’s airport. It is planned to transport 300,000 commuters per day.

In a downtown bus station, Yacinthe Yao and his teenage friends are excited about the train service. “That will make our life soooooo much easier.”

For the young man and his group of buddies in brown uniforms, there are no express buses. Their bus fare may cost only a monthly 3,000 CFA (about six dollars), but they have to fight for a place in an overpacked bus.

“We call it the Sardine line,” jokes one his friends. A few metres from where he stands, a train station will be built.

“It is good news, but we will be old when it starts to run. I was not even born when they started to work on the third bridge,” adds Kodjo, another friend.

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.

Old and grounded commuter trains belonging to National Railways of Zimbabwe in Harare lie in disuse. The country’s rail transport system is in crisis. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE, Mar 25 2013 (IPS)

Zimbabwe’s rail transport system may be nearing extinction if the government does not take drastic action to solve the series of operational challenges that have made commuter and goods train services rare here.

“The railway services are certainly in crisis because they have to keep paying about 7,000 people – most of whom have little chance of actually earning revenue for the system. The services are a drain on the economy,” John Robertson, a prominent economist from Robertson Economic Information Services in Harare, told IPS.

Independent economist Richard Laiton added that there is a possibility that it could mean the end of this southern African nation’s railway system. “It is unfortunate that the railroad transport system is turning idle and passive and may for the first time in history be phased out in Zimbabwe,” he told IPS.

According to statistics from the National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ), just before 2012 there were 120,000 daily train commuters countrywide. It has since dropped by 20 percent, a figure that NRZ officials said continues to fall.

“We used to have regular local commuter trains, but now they are rarely available and (minibus taxi) operators are daily milking us of our hard-earned cash,” Dickson Chirambwi, a commuter from Harare’s Budiriro high-density suburb, told IPS.

The recent fuel hikes have done little to ease the situation. On Mar. 11, Finance Minister Tendai Biti announced a 20 and 25 percent increase in excise duties on diesel and petrol respectively as a way to raise money to pay for Zimbabwe’s elections later this year. Currently, a litre of fuel costs between 1.53 dollars for diesel and 1.59 dollars for petrol.

Locally, minibus taxis charge between 0.50 dollars per trip to and from town, fares which often double during peak hours as taxi operators take advantage of desperate commuters who have little or no alternative transport. It is steep compared to the 0.20 dollars that commuter trains charge per trip to and from town.

But these commuter train services are now rare. Speaking to IPS on condition of anonymity, top NRZ officials in Harare told IPS that the railway’s numerous locomotives, wagons and coaches were now out of order, resulting in the struggling company battling to keep most of its workers.

Disgruntled NRZ workers continually protest for increased wages and operations at the railway are often disrupted because of this. Recent protests over wages saw the NRZ cancelling its Bindura and Chinhoyi line.

Dabuka is a commuter train marshalling yard in Gweru, in central Zimbabwe, and is supposed to be the epicentre of the country’s rail network, connecting trains between Harare and Bulawayo and linking the country with Mozambique, South Africa, Botswana and Namibia. But it is now desolate owing to reduced train commuters and goods trains passing through the siding.

Robertson said that considerable funding was needed to restore the railway services.

“We also need to restore stability to many of the sections of railway after years of neglect and we have to virtually rebuild the electronic traffic control and signaling systems. Many of the more important technical skills have been lost over the years of decline, so these too must be replaced. It all adds up to a very large and very expensive challenge,” he said.

Zimbabwe is still recovering from an economic crisis. Between 2003 and 2009, the country had one of the worst rates of hyperinflation in the world and its year on year inflation was reported as 231 percent. Prices of goods doubled here everyday and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe was forced to issue a 100 trillion  Zimbabwean dollar note.

Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce economist Kipson Gundani told IPS that the state-owned NRZ should be allowed to operate on a commercial basis.

“The NRZ suffered because of a decade-long economic crisis and doesn’t have a profit-making intention, resulting in the pegging of fares that are not cost-driven,” said Gundani.

A development economist with the Labour and Economic Development Research Institute of Zimbabwe, Prosper Chitambara, told IPS that the NRZ needed recapitalisation to save it, but the government said it did not have the funds.

The NRZ needs recapitalisation to the tune of between 300 and 400 million dollars for upgrading and rehabilitating infrastructure, but this year the government only allocated it 7.4 million dollars. Biti had said the NRZ infrastructure rehabilitation and maintenance surpassed the government’s budgetary capacity.

Businesspeople said they have also been affected by the dwindling rail transport services.

“Business used to be more viable for me during the days when I used to transport my tires for resell using goods trains from South Africa, but now I have to fork out more money hiring heavy trucks because goods trains are no longer reliable,” Brighton Mugadzi, a local businessman, told IPS.

Public relations manager for the NRZ, Fanuel Masikati, has been on record blaming the ailing company’s poor performance on the more than 90 Bulawayo firms that shut down last year.

But many are afraid that without trains, and with the increased transport costs, ordinary citizens and pensioners will be strained by consequent increases in prices of basic commodities.

Women vendors are among those hit by the reduced commuter rail services as they used to rely heavily on the trains to get to Mbare-Musika, an old, poor township in Harare, which has a major trading fruit and vegetable market.

“Commuter trains used to charge us 0.20 dollars per trip, but now we rarely see them operating,” 43-year-old Margret Chihwai, a vendor and single mother from Mufakose, a low income suburb in Harare, told IPS.

She said to get to the market now she has to use minibus taxis and fork out one dollar per trip during morning peak hours.

Many who once operated as vendors on commuter trains, like the blind 46-year-old Garikai Zinhu, have since plunged into suffering.

“I used to follow commuter trains on a daily basis, vending on the trains and that used to help me sustain my family. But now I’m without means to fend for my family,” Zinhu told IPS.

Meanwhile, industrialist Nickson Mhike told IPS that something needed to be done soon to avoid a crisis.

“Zimbabwe may face the subsequent disappearance of commuter and goods trains if urgent efforts are not made on time to solve the crisis at the NRZ inflicted by a decade-long economic meltdown,” he said.