E-Scooters vs Motorbikes in Vietnam

With the price of gasoline increasing by over 30% in Vietnam, former e-scooter skeptics are re-considering whether e-bikes will enter the market and what affect they might have on local air quality. Here is my take that I just posted on the Sustran listserve.

E-bikes emit a less on almost all levels than motorbikes. Some recent work we've been doing in China shows that e-bikes emit 1/3 the CO2 as a motorbike. Similar improvements can be seen on almost all local pollutants with the exception of SO2, which has comparable rates, but this highly depends on local electricity generation mix. Another issue where e-bikes have an advantage is the ability for agencies to manage a few point emission sources (power plants), compared to millions of tailpipes. Finally, emissions from power plants are generally more remote and thus populations have less exposure to the pollutant than ground-level tailpipe emissions in dense urban areas. In the context of local "tailpipe" emissions electric bikes/scooters/motorbikes perform much better than gasoline motorbikes.

Lead pollution on the other hand is where electric bikes do not perform so well. This is something that the Vietnam EPA is addressing by developing a lead acid battery recycling system that encourages take-back into the "formal" sector, rather than backyard recyclers. I am working with them on this along with the development of an eco-label for sustainable battery production with an NGO, OK International (www.okinternational.org). Whether the Vietnamese can succeed in managing a "clean" lead battery supply chain is uncertain but they are certainly making an effort to address it, before e-bikes flood the market. Because of Vietnam's poor recycling infrastructure, a lot of lead scrap in Vietnam is being exported (illegally) to China, but that could change as more recyclers enter the market. It could be beneficial to begin looking at new battery technology for this new market, now that Lead has gotten expensive and Li-ion is coming down in price. One still has to address the recycling problem, but Li-ion could be more manageable than Lead.

There is also some work in progress looking at some market analysis, using a stated preference survey that we conducted in June. The initial results actually show quite a strong preference for e-scooters, based on performance, cost and other metrics. I will send an email to this listserve when I have a report with some solid findings.

To summarize, e-scooters will improve local air quality, energy efficiency, and GHG emissions in Vietnam (perhaps also improving cost effectiveness of travel and safety at the same time). Introducing e-vehicles into the cities will increase lead pollution, simply because most current e-scooters use large lead batteries, frequently. The cost of alternative technology (Li-ion) is coming down, potentially leading to more adoption (maybe with the help of regulators). Also, Vietnam policy makers have been more pro-active than most in addressing lead problems in the past couple of years (in my opinion), so there is a higher chance that there will be a robust take-back policy like we see in the North America or Europe, and hopefully this will lead to high rates of formal recycling.