Was watching Discovery Channel’s Ecopolis. A show where Nobel Prize winning Dr. Daniel M. Kammen judges existing green technologies based on their scalability and their ability to reduce harmful carbon dioxide emissions for consideration in future city technologies.
Up for judgement on that episode was the Philippines’ own E-jeepney. The E-jeepney is an electric version of the Philippines main public transport vehicle that has been around since the end of world war II. Unlike its diesel powered ancestor, the e-jeepney is powered by a 5 hp motor, runs on batteries and weighs only 900lbs.
The Philippines E-Jeepney was designed and built by Robert Puckett’s Solar Electric Company (Solarco) with the initiative of Greenpeace Philippines. It took about 4 years for the said jeepney to be designed and built. It is currently plying the streets of villages in Makati, having been granted “slow moving vehicle” status by the Land Transportation Office.
How the E-jeepney is suppossed to work was that aside from being powered by electricity it would re-charge its batteries from electric generators powered by methane. The methane would be harvested from biodigesters using organic waste from land fills around the city.
Sadly though the E-Jeepney failed to make it to the Ecopolis because it was only effectively able to reduce carbon emissions in the city by 4%. It wasn’t the E-jeepney’s fault however since the design of the Ecopolis was that everybody would be driving their own cars and not taking public transportation.
Dr. Kammen however pointed out that if everybody in the city was using public transportation the e jeepney would be a very viable concept since it was able to reduce carbon emissions by 80% under the new conditions.
I think attention has to be given however to develop more powerful electric jeepneys because the slow moving e-jeepneys we have now just won’t sell to consumers and people who are in a real hurry all the time.
Contact information for the builders of the E-Jeepney:
Solar Electric Company
Mr. Robert Puckett
Tel: 7244812/7264322
May 2nd, 2009 at 1:06 am
It didn’t make it to the finish line, but it won it’s leg of the race. And that’s a pessimistic title, btw. But you sound like you don’t like the technology, so to each his own.