While most people are drive a fuel or diesel car, I was wondering if this is good for the environment. I was thinking that this is a big and important topic for the whole earth. It would be quite fascinating to see how our future mobility will develop and what a person like you and me can do to help our environment.

Why did I choose this project?

The topic by itself is quite interesting, but why did I choose it? Personally, I’m really into cars and it was quite logical for me to choose such a topic! Never less it took me quite some time to finally decide what I want to do as my project.

Another point is, that I (obviously) have an own car since I was 18.

Background idea

In the beginning, I did the project with Jarno. Unfortunately, he left the class. We started with the basic planning. Our first steps were to think, what we want to do in the whole project.

The best thing was a mind map. It really helped us in the further planning of the project.

Research and planing

After we’ve met regularly, we had gathered quite some ideas. We started with researching some topics like “hydrogen cars”, which wasn’t really a hard task at all, as I often read scientific articles in English! I collected some ideas and started researching them.

The hardest part was finding someone willing to let us test drive and compare a diesel, hybrid, and electric car! Most of the people and companies told us, that we were too young and/or they only let people test drive their cars when they are interested in buying a car, which obviously we weren’t! Luckily, we found a willing person to let us test drive not only an electric car, but also a hybrid and a diesel car! This was a great success, as we could compare every major car type directly.

While researching we saw, that the European union plans to cut down the numbers of non-electric cars by a lot. I asked myself, if that even would be possible up to the year 2030 or 2050. This was the reason we tried to get an interview from an expert of a “not so wealthy” European country. I managed to get an interview, which just confirmed my theory. My interview partner was from Bosnia and Herzegovina and mas a master’s degree in economy. The biggest point I got out of the interview was that in his opinion Bosnia can’t manage to even get near the goal of the EU (2030). Most people can’t even afford a new car right now, and the biggest part (in all Balkan countries) of cars are used cars from either Germany, Switzerland or France.

Why is the current mobility a problem?

Currently, the mankind is producing far to much emissions, which really isn’t good at all for our planet. 16.5% of all produced emissions come from mobility, such as planes, cars, trucks, ships and so on. This number could be reduced by a lot, which would be a huge impact!

11.9% out of these 16.5% are produced by “road-mobility”, which mostly means cars and trucks. The first time we saw that data, we were expecting far more % out of the 100 in total, but we agreed that it would be possible to reduce this number by a lot if everybody would do a small part.

Possible methods to improve our impact

You might say, that its important to reduce the emissions produced by cars, but how can you do it yourself?

1. Drive less by car

It might sound hard, but do you really need your car to go to school, work or even shopping? In most situations you easily can go by train, by bike or even by foot! If everyone would only use their cars for long range, it would already reduce the CO2 emissions by a lot!

2. Drive environmental friendlier

You might ask yourself “how does a person drive environmental friendlier?”. The answer to that question is quite easy. Many people believe that their car used (as an example) 7.5l per 100km and that’s it – but this isn’t right!

The biggest step is, don’t just push the gas pedal like you’re driving in a Fast and Furious movie! A gas pedal doesn’t have to be pushed at the limit to drive – nor does it have to be pushed only a little. This will change your fuel usage by a lot! The same Also goes for the brake! If you push your break a lot, you have to change it fast!

Another big impact is the a/c in your car. You don’t have to use the a/c every time you drive your car. Use it wisely when its really hot or really cold!

Last but not least –maintain your car on a regular base! You ask why it is important to change the engine oil regular? It reduces the chance that the engine will fail and reduces the emissions in general!

3. Don’t let the car idle for a long time!

For those who don’t know he word “idle”, it means letting your car run while not driving it. Yes it might be necessary for those pals who don’t have a own garage in winter, but why would you run your car idle in summer?

Just to let you know, idling can and will (in long term) cause damage to car parts like the cylinder walls, the exhaust or the spark plugs!

4. Use a efficient car

Yes this might sound obvious to the most of you, but this is a big part in helping the environment! Try to get a efficient car and get rid of your wasteful diesel car as an example. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to get rid of all fuel and diesel cars – I love old- and young timers!

If you’re a car guy like me you (most likely) will love the sound a good fuel car produces. May I suggest you something? There are hybrids with much power, great sound and they do less harm to the environment! Doesn’t this sound good? Personally my next car will most likely be a hybrid car.

My surveys

As you might already know or expect, I did two surveys. One was national (in Switzerland) while the other was international. Unfortunately, I didn’t got as much answers as I would liked.

Here you can compare the two surveys:

Umfrage Resultate (German/Deutsch)

Unfortunately, the english survey didn’t get many responses. If you want to help out please fill out this survey (humanitarianresponse.info).

Interview

As mentioned before, we did an interview. We wanted to know if it actually is possible for every European country to “adopt” e-cars. The interview was with an economic expert from Bosnia. The main goal of the interview was to see if “poorer countries” could change their infrastructure up to 2050. Here you can read about the most important part.

The interview was done with Dejan Radmanovic. He studied economics and lives in Bosnia. We did it on May 26. Here you have a picture of him:

What do you think about e-mobility?

In my opinion, e-mobility is really important and a good step into a better future. Sooner or later the e-cars will conquer the roads of each country and be good for the general climate.

Do you know the current state of e-mobility in Bosnia?

Currently, there are 25-35 charging stations, which obviously is not enough! The biggest part of our population actually still drives cars with Euro-3 norm! This is pretty worse for the environment.

The problem is that many people earn around BAM 600, which would be like CHF 335! That is the main problem. Most people, especially people around 25 and later 50+ have got a quite tight budget. I also know people around 60+ which do need a car for their daily live and have to take a credit for a car which would cost around CHF 10’000.

As you can see, many people struggle to get a decent used car right now and quite some do have to take loans. Right now, the cheapest e-car I saw in my country was a small Renault Twingo. It did cost around CHF 20’000! This just is not an option for the most people.

Do you expect some changings in the near future?

Unfortunately, my answer has to be a direct no. Our economy will not change soon as it would need to. While today most people buy a car with around 250’000 km on their motors, this will probably be a much lower number in the next years.

Is the goal of the EU (only e-cars in 2050) possible for Bosnia?

Possible? Maybe – but more than just hard. The main problem is, and still will be, our economy! Unfortunately, I do not see our economy developing much to the date. Personally, I think Bosnia will not only have e-cars but probably many used hybrids from countries like Germany or Switzerland.

 

My conclusion

As you might already tell: I’m a big car enthusiast. I probably will drive a fuel car as long as I can. Does this mean I only harm the environment? In my opinion no. I really care about the environment and try to do my best in all possible things. For my car, I drive it as environmentally friendly as possible! My next car will most likely be a hybrid – which is a great mid-field for people like me. Once there are good options for e-cars, I probably will buy one, but right now, there isn’t any option for me at all.

I think the mobility will change drastically in the next 20 years and most people today can’t even imagine how it will be. But we can definitely agree into something: e-cars and other alternatives will continue to rise in popularity as the technology advances – which will be good for our one and only planet!

If you want to read about another quite similar project on don’t waste my energy, I suggest you reading the post about electric cars in Zurich and the city traffic in Zurich.

Contributors:

Daniel Schmid and Jarno Häne

Sources:

[1] Die Stadt neu gestalten – klimaneutral (moneta.ch)
[2] hydrogen fuel cell cars: everything you need to know (bmw.com)
[3] All you need to know about electric cars in 5 minutes (eon.com)
[4] Der 911 soll ab 2024 mit E-Fuels fahren (auto-motor-und-sport.de)
[5] Climate protection provides cheaper energy (ethz.ch)
[6] Elektroauto (wikipedia.com)
[7] Elektromobilität (volkswagen.ch)

Text corrected by:
Iain Weder

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