Abstract
Building confidence for zero emission buses has been the strategy to create demand in Latin America. A few cities have more e-buses than any other region in the world outside of China. It all started by testing hybrid and electric buses, sharing data, building innovative economic models, making site visits, and sharing results in workshops. It all occurred during the last 10 years. Institutions including development banks are now committed to assisting with the transition towards zero emission public transport in cities. A number of bus suppliers offer their technologies, most of them from China as Europe is still behind in the Latam e-bus market. Most barriers have already been broken, and confidence in the technology and the market has brought investors to the region. E-buses are key to reducing greenhouse emissions in the region, and the accelerated transition is helping cities with this challenge.
TopBackground
In August 2010, the Clinton Climate Initiative, C40’s implementing agency at the time, signed a non-reimbursable technical cooperation with the IADB. This allowed C40 to test hybrid and electric buses in Bogotá, Santiago de Chile, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo, and to compare their performance and the life cycle economic cost or total ownership cost (TCO) against that of an equivalent bus that used diesel fuel.
This project, the first of its kind in the world, obtained the participation of several bus suppliers: BYD (electric - China), Eletra (hybrid - Brazil), Hankuk Fiber (electric - Korea), Mercedes Benz (diesel - Brazil), Volvo (diesel and hybrid – Sweden, Brazil), and Youngman (hybrid - China). All tests engaged bus operators in each of the cities and Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) authorities. Buses were imported from different places and an international consultancy team –International Sustainable Systems Research Center (ISSRC)– was hired to develop specific test protocols and to carry out the tests. Supervision of the field work was also contracted with international experts for each city.
Key Terms in this Chapter
R&D: Research and development.
ICCT: International Council on Clean Transportation.
WRI: World Resources Institute.
Investor: An organization interested in putting money in projects looking for profits in a certain period.
VAT: Value added tax.
CNG: Compressed natural gas.
GIZ: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, the German society for international cooperation.
ITPD: Institute for Transportation and Development Policy.
GHG: Greenhouse gas.
CAF: The Latin American Development Bank.
CAPEX: Capital expenditures is the money a company needs to procure, upgrade, or maintain physical assets and includes the financial cost of the money.
NGOs: Non-governmental organizations.
Battery Density: The amount of Watt hours (Wh) that can be held in a certain volume. It can also be expressed in terms of gravimetric density or Watt hours per kilogram (Wh/kg).
E-Bus: A large electric vehicle used to carry passengers by road whose energy source is electricity provided directly from the electric grid, from a storage equipment like a battery or from fuel cells.
Fossil Bus: Any large ground passenger transportation vehicle that has an engine that functions with fossil fuels.
TCO of a Bus: Total Cost of Ownership is the sum of the capital cost of an asset, including financial costs, and the operations costs that include fix and variable costs to keep the asset running.
OPEX: Is the set of all expenses in which a company incurs in to keep the business running and includes administration, maintenance taxes and the like.
Battery: An electric system able to generate electricity via chemical reactions or to store electricity coming from external sources.
IFC: International Finance Corporation – World Bank Group.
C40-CFF: The Cities Finance Facility of C40 Cities.
IADB: Inter-American Development Bank.
Hybrid Bus: Any large ground passenger transportation vehicle that operates with an internal combustion engine and electricity stored in batteries.
Zero Emission Bus: A large ground passenger transportation vehicle that has no tailpipe outflows.
BRT: Bus rapid transit.
ZEBRA: Zero Emissions Bus Rapid-Deployment Accelerator, a program of ICCT and C40 Cities.
Battery Cycle: The process of recharging a battery until it reaches 100% of its storage capacity.