Electric bikes to preserve Vietnam environment
HANOI - Women under conical hats, riding old bicycles and soaked with sweat under
the scorching sun, used to be the favorite image transmitted by photographers from Vietnam about 20 years ago.
Now they would have a hard time finding such scenes, because the streets are flooded with motorbikes, as well
as with the fumes they emit.
For those who pine for the fresh air of the past, without returning to the bicycle moved by their own efforts, a
Vietnamese scientist has developed a bicycle propelled by an electric motor.
''I want to help improve our environment and to diversify the application of my scientific study to people's lives,''
said Nguyen Hong Quyen, 50, of the Institute of Materials Sciences under the Vietnam National Center for Social
Sciences and Technology in Hanoi.
Powered with a 36-volt, 200-watt motor and a storage battery, the bike with the trademark of GreenBike can carry
a load of up to 130 kilograms and run at a top speed of 25 kilometers per hour for 35 km when the battery has
been charged for 10 hours. If the battery runs out, the rider can resort to pedal power.
Quyen, who studied physics in East Germany from 1966 to 1972, said he made the motor watertight so the bike
can navigate flooded streets, taking into consideration the tropical monsoon climate in Vietnam. The motor can
be fixed to either the front or rear hub of the bike.
In principle, the motor can be installed on any kind of bicycle, but Japanese-made ones are preferable because
they are strong, light and stable at high speed, he said.
The motor, the speed controller and the battery add 14 kg to the weight of the bike, and 2.3 million dong ($160),
to the cost. This compares with roughly 14 million dong for a 50 cc gasoline-powered motorcycle.
Quyen, however, said the weight, speed and cost are ''quite suitable'' to the health and the pocket of his
envisioned users among women, the old, and high-school students.
The idea of producing the bike came to Quyen two years ago when he sought to diversify the application of
motors by using powerful rare-earth magnets produced at his institute. ''If we only produced small electricity
generators for use in mountainous regions, the maintenance would be a very hard work for us,'' he said.
Quyen said the bike did not attract much attention until it was put on show at an economic exhibition held in
Hanoi on the occasion of Vietnam's 55th National Day on Sept. 2, 2000.
Since then, he has made about 100 of the bikes, offering free maintenance right at the house of the buyer as a
promotion.
''Orders have come pouring in, and customers have to wait because we haven't started mass production of this
bike,'' Quyen said.
The business, however, is not financially profitable as the cost of making the motor is rather high. ''But ideas
contributed by customers about the bike so that we can perfect are our biggest scientific profit,'' he said.
Quyen said he has not transferred the technology to factories because it is ''still very new and difficult'' for them
to absorb.
The heart of the motor is the magnet made from rare earth, which is expensive and difficult for ordinary factories
to produce, and that is why mass production of the motor is not expected in the near future, Quyen said.
Production of the bikes would ''gradually and surely'' expand if the government, as expected, restricts the import
and use of motorbikes, and in the context of constantly increasing gasoline prices, he said.
Vietnam counted 3.6 million motorbikes in 1995, mostly imported from Japan, and 6 million in 2000. About 8
million motorbikes will occupy the roads of the country in 2001, and the figure would double in 10 years when
Vietnam starts assembling them inside the country, making it almost impossible to move on the roads
Kyodo News - December 31, 2000.
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