Slow-charging progress in e-mobility in need of boost

Electric vehicles, such as VinFast’s electric scooter Klara, can go a long way towards reducing the air pollution plaguing Vietnam’s largest cities (photo: Le toan)

Parents of pupils at Ly Thai To Primary School in Thanh Xuan district, one of the most populous districts in Hanoi, recently received a warning notice that the school would halt outdoor activities and encourage children to wear protective masks on the way to school due to concerns raised by the thick blankets of smog covering Hanoi in recent times.

Mai Lan, mother of a first grader who used to live in the countryside, said, “We feel sorry for our son as he is forced to limit his outdoor activities. Even at the weekend, I do not let him play outside as usual.”

The poor air quality in major Vietnamese cities is caused by a range of factors, including transportation, agriculture, and waste. More people are beginning to pay attention to fine dust measurements classified as PM2.5, which refers to atmospheric particulate matter that have a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometres. However, the main causes for poor air quality in cities like Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City are still debated.

Finding the main causes

Last week, both cities once again held meetings to minimise the negative effects of air pollution, as measurements rose to an alarming level over the last few weeks. The air quality is monitored by companies such as AirVisual, an international air quality monitoring facility that generates data from public, ground-based, and real-time monitoring stations.

However, Hanoi is likely to disagree on the main cause of the city’s air pollution, with one official saying that “air pollution in Hanoi comes from transportation, people’s activities, construction, and industry. Among that, activities from transportation and construction lead to huge levels of PM2.5 in the air.”

A leader of the Vietnam Environment Administration under the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment added that the air quality also depends on temperature and low rainfall.

Meanwhile, Ho Chi Minh City pointed to motorbikes and cars as one of the main reasons for its polluted air. The city’s point of view may be a reason for another boost on the ban on motorcycles in big cities by 2030.

The idea of banning motorcycles in large cities, however, is not new. Hanoi’s People Committee approved Resolution 4 in 2017 in order to manage the number of vehicles in operation and reduce congestion and pollution. Meanwhile, Ho Chi Minh City and the central city of Danang also discussed a proposal to limit and ban motorbikes. Apart from that, there has been no further official decision on this issue so far.

“The plan to charge cars and remove motorbikes from downtown Ho Chi Minh City by 2025-2030 in order to resolve congestions in the city is not feasible,” said traffic expert Ngo Viet Nam Son earlier this year.

However, the situation is slowly changing with the emergence of electric motorbikes. New players such as VinFast are trying to conquer the personal transport market, and the planned ban on motorcycles could further pave the way for electric modes of transport, thereby helping the country in its transition to e-mobility in the near future.

In an increasingly mobile society, the sustainable production and usage of personal transport devices and services is critical, particularly with respect to models of circular and zero-carbon economies.

Transforming into e-mobility, ready or not

Mobility has been an essential instrument of social and economic development, and the mass production of fossil fuel-based internal combustion engines in the early 20th century revolutionised mobility by extending travel distances and reducing travel times.

As a result, motorised vehicles have played a key role in shaping human settlement and activity patterns. However, the need for increased mobility is going unmet in many parts of the developing world. Addressing these mobility needs will require a substantial increase of vehicles and services of one type or another, together with supportive transport policies and infrastructure development, according to experts.

According to the Global EV Outlook 2019 report, published by the International Energy Agency (IEA), electric mobility is expanding at a rapid pace. In 2018, the global electric car fleet exceeded 5.1 million vehicles, two million more than in 2017 and almost doubling the number of new electric car registrations.

By the end of 2018, the global stock of electric two-wheelers was at 260 million vehicles, and there were 460,000 electric buses. In freight transport, electric vehicles (EV) were mostly deployed as light-commercial vehicles, which reached 250,000 units in 2018, while medium electric truck sales were in the range of 1,000-2,000 in the same year.

Despite the growing sales and announcements of policy and deployment plans by many countries and cities, the current number of EVs in Vietnam is still too small to have any meaningful impact on emissions reduction.

For people like Mai Lan, using an electric motorbike would be a good alternative if there were fewer difficulties related to it, such as a lack of charging stations and costly or complicated replacement of parts.

Daniel Doni Sundjojo, business development manager at JATO Dynamics, which globally analyses market trends for vehicles, said, “To ensure both environmental protection and sustainable growth, Vietnam should set up targets for the adoption of e-mobility, including charging standards and power supply.”

In its Global EV Outlook, the IEA made suggestions that could create a clearer path for Vietnam.

“Close co-operation between EV manufacturers and fleet operators will be important to ensure that they can effectively meet the operational and technical requirements of shared mobility services and take advantage of their high vehicle utilisation rates.”

“Ensuring that shared vehicles will be electric requires reducing financing barriers for the more expensive vehicle purchases (especially for vehicles owned by individuals, given that they are often capital constrained) and providing access to chargers. Combinations of policy measures and company efforts could accelerate the electrification of fleets,” the report cited.

Currently, the Vietnamese motorbike market is dominated by foreign players, such as the five members of the Vietnam Association of Motorcycle Manufacturers (Piaggio, Suzuki, SYM, Yamaha, and Honda), all of which have estimated their sales in 2019 to be higher than those of the previous year.