Fujitsu and GMS partner on trial of electric tricycles in the Philippines
09 April 2015
Fujitsu Limited and Global Mobility Service, Inc. (GMS), a venture company providing mobility services, will partner on field testing to expand the use of electric tricycles (a three-wheel taxi) in the Republic of the Philippines.
GMS has already conducted a trial in Metro Manila that ran from September 2014 through January 2015 using electric tricycles with proprietary sensing technologies and technologies such as remote vehicle-control systems, fare-authentication systems, and anti-theft systems. The company plans to begin actual services the second quarter of the calendar year.
Fujitsu will work with GMS to connect its system to the Fujitsu Intelligent Society Solution SPATIOWL to trial additional services in Metro Manila that will begin in late 2015. SPATIOWL is a cloud service that uses location information gathered from sensors and vehicles.
These services will include a feature for estimating the available driving range based on the battery reserves and power-consumption profile; a service showing the routes to charging stations; and a service that plans routes to consume the least amount of power.
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| Electric tricycle. Click to enlarge. | How GMS and SPATIOWL work together. Click to enlarge. |
Following the trials, these functions will be added to the service that GMS is launching in the second quarter, and will be put into operation in the Philippines in fiscal 2016.
The companies are considering services in other Southeast Asian countries and China as the market for electric vehicles is expected to expand.
Background. The Philippines is home to more than 3.5 million gasoline-powered tricycles. As the air-pollution problem worsens, the government of the Philippines is moving to introduce 100,000 electric tricycles. However, because most tricycle operators in the Philippines have low incomes, they can neither afford to buy an electric tricycle outright nor pass a credit check. GMS seeks to work around this problem by lending vehicles in the Philippines and providing electric vehicle services without requiring credit checks.
GMS developed a Mobility-Cloud Connecting System which enables remote vehicle control, and conducted a trial of mobility services that can track a vehicle’s current location and disable a vehicle if usage-fee payments fall into arrears. The trial, which took place in Metro Manila, the capital area of the Philippines, ran from September 2014 through January 2015.
Since then, GMS reached an agreement with one of the Philippines’ leading infrastructure companies, the Tricycle Operators and Drivers Association (TODA), and Quezon City, the country’s most populous urban area, to lead the large-scale deployment of electric vehicles equipped with this service, based upon their evaluation. Business is set to commence in the second quarter.
This approach could be expanded to India with a few million e-tricycles to reduce pollution and GHG in many major cities.
Regular e-taxis could also benefit from similar system in most major world cities to make ownership easier and accelerate transition to electrified vehicles.
Posted by: HarveyD | 09 April 2015 at 11:14 AM
This is a citywide pollution problem, rather than a global GHG problem, the city has far larger problems that need to be solved ASAP.
The way to look at this is to get rid of as many 2 stroke engines as possible and replace them with something better and affordable.
I would assume this means catalysed 4 stroke engines.
These would have to be cheap enough that all the tricycle owners could afford them.
You might need special finance provisions as many of the owners are very poor and have very little free cash to purchase a new vehicle.
Then, you mandate the removal of all 2 stroke engines from tricycles and scooters etc.
It would be nice to go electric in one hop, but I think they would be better going "clean ICE" first, then electric.
+ they may not have a big enough grid to support hundreds of electric tricycles charging at night.
BTW, the tricycles are incredible - they are motorbike sidecar combinations with a canvas roof to keep off the rain. They get 4 people (+driver) on them and they rock alarmingly as the go over speed ramps. They look unbelievably dangerous to me - I wonder what the annual deaths are ?
Posted by: mahonj | 11 April 2015 at 01:59 AM