VietNamNet Bridge – Electric bicycles are believed to be the green means of transport, which specially is useful in urban areas. However, in fact, they are not green as thought.

More and more Hanoians go to the office every morning on electric bicycles, which are considered the most suitable means of transport for individuals nowadays.

Unlike normal bicycles, which move very slowly, just 12-18 kilometers an hour, thus causing traffic jam, electric bicycles can bring the drivers to their destinations more quickly.

Meanwhile, the bicycles are very “green” and friendly to the environment, because they don’t produce smoke and fumes. And they are not too expensive to the majority of office workers. An HKbike brand electric bicycle imported from Hong Kong, for example, is now priced at VND11.5 million. It allows traveling 70-85 kilometers for one time of battery charging.

In Hanoi, HCM City and other big cities, people have been encouraged to travel on electric bicycles. Especially, local newspapers quoted high ranking officials as saying that electric bicycles have “made a green revolution” in the industrial era. Local authorities have been asked to subsidize electric bicycles to encourage more people to choose the environment friendly means of transport.

Nevertheless, Dr. Nguyen Dinh Hoe from the Vietnam Association for the Nature and Environment Protection, affirmed that electric bicycles are not green, clean, and not friendly to the environment as people think.

Hoe said while electric bicycles don’t produce smoke, which means they don’t pollute the environment directly, they bring latent risks to the environment.

The bicycles don’t discharge fumes like cars or motorbikes, but they encourage the actions which harm the environment. Electric bicycles run on electricity, thus encouraging the deforestation and coal burning.

More seriously, electric bicycles use lead batteries, which are very dangerous to the environment and people. In general, every bicycle has 3-4 batteries, each of which can be used for 2 years. As such, if Vietnam has 10,000 electric bicycles, it would have 30,000-40,000 lead batteries to be discharged to the environment every year.

Lead batteries, in legal documents, are listed as a kind of hazardous waste. Therefore, only the licensed enterprises can collect and treat the batteries.

However, according to Hoe, the batteries have been collected by individuals and carried to the craft villages, where batteries are recycled manually with rudimentary instruments and backward technology. As a result, the environment has become seriously polluted.

Also according to Hoe, while Vietnam allows importing electric bicycles, it needs to think about how to deal with the hazardous waste to be produced by the products. If the hazardous waste treatment cannot meet the standards, the use of electric bicycles would do more harm than good. While Vietnam tries to clean the environment, it would make it dirtier.

Regarding the quality of electric bicycles, no state management agency has been assigned the task of inspecting the quality of the imports.

Tran Van Vinh from the quality directorate of the Ministry of Science and Technology, affirmed that under the current laws, the Ministry of Transport has to set up the technical and safety standards for the products.

Chi Mai