Automakers pushback against PM's vision
As Pakistan's first-ever electric three-wheeled rickshaws start to roll off the assembly line, the country is struggling to build momentum for its shift to electric vehicles in efforts to cut air pollution and curb climate change.
It has been four months since Prime Minister Imran Khan's cabinet approved the National Electric Vehicle Policy, offering tax exemptions and incentives to manufacturers, importers and buyers of electric vehicles.
But pushback by traditional automakers has stalled the government's finalising of the policy, leaving electric vehicle (EV) makers worried that eco-friendly cars, vans, motorcycles and rickshaws will remain too expensive for the mass market.
"The electric rickshaws have comparatively much lower running and maintenance costs," said Syed Ismail Ghaznavi, sales head at Sazgar Engineering Works Limited, which launched the country's first electric rickshaw in January.
Sazgar's electric rickshaw can travel up to 170 km (105 miles) on a charge, has almost no moving parts - which means fewer trips to the mechanic - and produces zero emissions, Ghaznavi pointed out.
"But we need the government support to roll it out on a larger scale for the public," he said. Transport accounts for more than 40% of the air pollution produced in Pakistan, according to data from the country's climate change ministry.
In the policy it approved in November, the government set a target to bring half a million electric motorcycles and rickshaws, along with more than 100,000 electric cars, buses and trucks, into the transportation system in the next five years.
By 2030, the government wants to have about one-third of the vehicles in Pakistan running on electrical energy, said Malik Amin Aslam, the prime minister's advisor on climate change,
The move to electric vehicles is "a win-win strategy", Aslam told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, saying it should reduce emissions by nearly 3Q and cut cost of running a vehicle by 60%.
Pakistan generates less than 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions, but it is one of the countries that suffers most from the effects of climate change, including flooding, droughts, heat waves and melting glaciers, environmental experts say.
The Global Climate Risk Index 2020, issued by environmental think-tank Germanwatch, ranked Pakistan fifth among the 10 countries most affected by extreme weather over the last 20 years. "Our food security is at risk due to these climate change conditions, and we have to focus on adaptation," said Imran Saqib Khalid, a research fellow at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, an Islamabadbased independent think-tank.
In particular, the new electric vehicle policy will help curb air pollution and smog, "a major environmental problem the country has been facing for the past few years."