Hybrid cars and their current repercussions

Changing a city’s vehicle fleet is very important for the health, wellbeing and the quality of life of its inhabitants. Also, owning a hybrid or electric vehicle is a very cost efficient option because of the vehicles autonomy. In some places, like Europe, these vehicle owners receive several and very interesting benefits such as the exemption from paying the registry tax. They also give industrial and commercial vehicles the possibility of loading and unloading in residential areas during the day, as well as city center parking and transit benefits.

Nevertheless, it is important to mention that, even though there are many advantages to owning these vehicles, they are not the solution to Lima’s high density transit problems, but it does contribute significantly in reducing the emission of greenhouse effect gasses, street noise and the general health costs.

With that in mind, we must first analyze the vehicular landscape as a whole, because even though most people think that they will help the environment just by owning one of these vehicles, if we pay attention to the life span they have, we’ll notice that in order to really help it would be necessary to transform the whole industry. We must also consider that fabricating these vehicles would also require a lot of energy, from the extraction and processing of raw materials, assembling, transportation and recycling process, even though that last part has become more efficient recently, it is not yet enough.

Taking this into account we must consider that without industry transformation, we wouldn’t be able to obtain the desired results to comply with the Paris Agreement. Also, in order to really contribute with helping the environment we must be sure that the energy used to fill these vehicles batteries is clean. When it comes to maintenance, electric cars are much cheaper. Gas hybrid cars with GNV and GNC systems also have many advantages when it comes to long distance and public transport, GNL systems also offer advantages when it comes to massive or cargo transport.

A successful example of this is Tesla, the company who is leading the way in design, manufacturing and sale of electric cars that has put many resources into innovation and research to achieve this. We also have the example of Volvo, a company that has announced that starting 2019 will no longer manufacture vehicles that aren’t either electric of hybrid, and will gradually reduce internal combustion vehicles in the markets around the world. After the Volvo announcement, both France and the UK chose to ban the sales of internal combustion vehicles starting the year 2040 in order to contribute with cleansing the air of their countries. India and China intend to do the same.

In conclusion, in order to move towards lower CO2 emissions, we require clear financial mechanisms, like the infrastructure to charge such vehicles, also for matters of research for energy storage, incentive programs for citizens willing to change, etc. For this reason, it is no easy task for a country, but it could be achieved if you have a government willing to work in long term.