Effects of Hybrid Vehicle Import on Air Pollution

Khodrocar – Hybrid vehicles faced many problems during their presence in Iran like tariff increment which the Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade decided to reduce them again.

Since the beginning of this year due to currency problems and rising dollar rates, car imports have encountered many problems. During the first three months of this year, vehicle imports reduce by 74 percent in comparison to the first three months of the last year.

The point here is that hybrid vehicles have lower fuel consumption than petrol, and their use reduces environmental pollution and fuel consumption. But it seems that the government and ministry pays no attention to these vehicles.

According to the low volume of hybrid vehicles imports, what are the effects of these cars on environmental pollutions and why there are no differences between these vehicles and gasoline ones in Iran?

Farbod Zaveh, an automotive industry expert tells Khodrocar regarding the issue: "Hybrid cars have lower fuel consumption compared with gasoline cars but the point is even with reducing the tariff to five percent, the market share of these cars in Iran is so low that in the short term, it does not have any effect on reducing air pollution.”

He continues: "One million and 400 thousand cars are produced in Iran each year and hybrids have a little slice of this huge share because of their high prices.”

This expert believes that importing and producing hybrid are long term and effective but there are short-term plans that could be implemented to reduce air pollution.

Allocating 420 thousand IRRs Dollar rate for Public Transportation Import
Public transportation in the country has one of the greatest impacts on air pollution. Farbod Zaveh says: "One of the priorities must be the renovation of public transportation vehicle by allocating 420 IRRs dollar rate. This will facilitate their import and in the same time, the scrappage scheme of worn out vehicles must be implemented.”

Increasing the Fuel Price
The expert explains: "One million and 400 thousand cars are produced in Iran each year most of them does not have standard fuel consumption. An effective way to reduce emissions is to raise fuel prices.”

Zaveh continues: "Consider that the domestic vehicles become hybrid; The fuel prices are very cheap and nobody does even think about buying them.”

Khodrocar – Considering the situation, it seems that the government must think about renovation of public transportation system and fuel price increment beside importing and producing hybrid vehicles. Now we should see how things will go in the future.


Khodrocar Reporter and Translator: Maziyar Jafarieh