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Clean and sustainable transportation through electric vehicles — a user survey of three-wheeler vehicles in Pakistan

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Abstract

Transportation sector is one of the major contributors to GHG emissions, and it is essential to investigate the role of electric vehicles in economic and environmental performance of developing countries. In this research work, the authors seek to investigate the usage pattern of three-wheeler vehicle by taking a Pakistan-based survey approach and analyzing the responses from various three-wheeler drivers across the country. The survey results indicate that the adoption of hybrid and electric three-wheelers in Pakistan would be welcomed by the users due to increased economic benefits, despite having a high initial capital cost. On an average basis, the regular three-wheeler is run for more than 5 days a week, 101–150 km daily across more than 10 h, and enables the owner to make around PKR 20,000–25,000 (~ US $119–US $149) after approximately PKR 15,000 (~ USD $89) is spent every month on fuel and maintenance. The adoption of hybrid or electric three-wheelers can easily improve the monthly earnings by 50%. In addition to this, the GHG emissions from the transportation sector will be considerably lowered around 3–6 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year per three-wheeler. At an investment return period of 13–16 months, the electric three-wheeler is a highly lucrative opportunity.

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Data availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Notes

  1. Transport accounts for nearly quarter of the total energy related CO2 emissions (https://www.unenvironment.org/explore-topics/resource-efficiency/what-we-do/cities/sustainable-transport-and-air-pollution).

  2. 1 USD = 167.38 PKR, as of September 2021.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Zeeshan Haider and Muhammad Awais for their help in data collection.

Funding

This research work has been supported by the Higher Education Commission Pakistan through Technology Development Fund, grant number TDF-02–212.

higher education commision,pakistan,TDF-02–212,Mohammad Aamir Khan

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Integrated Engineering Centre of Excellence, The University of Lahore, Lahore, Pakistan

    Mohammad Aamir Khan, Syed Fawad Bokhari, Aazir Khan, Muhammad Saad Amjad & Arooj Mobasher Butt

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Lahore, Lahore, Pakistan

    Mohammad Aamir Khan, Muhammad Saad Amjad & Muhammad Zeeshan Rafique

Authors
  1. Mohammad Aamir Khan
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  2. Syed Fawad Bokhari
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  3. Aazir Khan
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  4. Muhammad Saad Amjad
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  5. Arooj Mobasher Butt
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  6. Muhammad Zeeshan Rafique
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Contributions

MAK, SFB, and AK supervised the whole project; MAK and MSA designed the questionnaire; MAK and AK provided resources for data collection; MSA performed data analysis and wrote the initial draft; MZR and MAK validated the data; AMB, MAK, AK, and MZR reviewed and edited the final draft.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Muhammad Saad Amjad.

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Ethics approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Consent to publish was obtained from all the survey participants.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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Khan, M.A., Bokhari, S.F., Khan, A. et al. Clean and sustainable transportation through electric vehicles — a user survey of three-wheeler vehicles in Pakistan. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 45560–45577 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-19060-x

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