Owing to mounting environmentalist pressures, motorcycle owners and tricycle operators have been duped into hastily dumping their two-stroke engines and forced to shift to four-stroke engines, without realizing that four-stroke engines emit equally toxic fumes, although these are odorless and colorless, thus, escaping the scrutiny of gullible environmentalists.
Why two strokes were scrapped. Two-stroke engines are actually durable and can last for 25 to 30 years, which are good for users, but this is not good business for manufacturers.
Unfortunately, manufacturers could not declare their products as defective, so they funded research institutions to find what’s wrong with two-stroke engines, which were visible for their high hydrocarbon emissions. Two decades back, they indirectly influenced the setting of tricycle emission standards that zeroed in solely on hydro-carbons.
Suddenly, they came out with four-stroke engines, which brag of low hydrocarbons. Environmentalists and many local government units (LGUs) alike responded aggressively, even passing ordinances forcibly requiring tricycles to shift to four-stroke engines.
Secrets of four-stroke engines. With more strokes, there is more friction among engine parts, resulting in faster wear and tear, thus, achieving what critics call “programmed obsolescence” of creating faster replacement markets.
Owing to the heat generated by more friction, the initial models were failures with one tricycle case in uphill Antipolo exploding and amputating the driver’s legs. Many studies have shown that nitrogen oxide increase six to 10 times, while carbon monoxide, a more lethal emission, also increases with four-stroke engines. However, unlike hydrocarbons of two strokes, these are invisible and odorless, but extremely lethal, if we can recall what happened to singer Carol Banawa’s father and brother, while inside a car with engines on, inside a mall’s car park. One of them died, and the other got paralyzed as they inhaled carbon monoxide.
Ishmael Sevilla, president of the confederation of the 17 Metro Manila tricycle federations called National Capital Region Toda Coalition, argued, “na-strokan lang kami [We were just duped].”
Even if their two-stoke units were still okay, they were forced to junk them in favor of four-stroke engines, which are now selling about 1 million units a year, or sales of P70 billion a year based on the lowest cash sales of P70,000 per unit. In the end, it was all business, and not really environmental concerns, although some four-stroke models are trying to address their emission problems.
Dumping ground of experiments? Still saddled with thousands of hazardous junked two-stroke engines, Sevilla complains of the dumping on them of various emission-reducing technologies, like the Retrofit technology of Colorado and the LPG conversion kits, which all failed technically, leaving them with no after-sales service support.
“While we are still reeling from amortizing heavily for our new four-stroke engines, there are moves forcing us to shift to electric tricycles (e-trikes), costing P350,000 to P450,000 each with financing. On three-year loan payments, this means amortizations of P480 a day, which is more than the P200-a-day boundary income of a tricycle operator,” Sevilla said.
So this entire cost has to be shouldered by the driver, which is untenable, considering a driver spends only 3 liters of gasoline, or P120 a day. He may save on gasoline but will spend more on amortizations, benefiting more the e-trike suppliers and the financiers.
Moreover, there are technical issues, like charging time, short shelf life of those four heavy lead acid batteries, disposal of these hazardous batteries, etc.
‘Try to be clean with Tricy-clean.’ As Section 15 of the Clean Air Act on Pollution Research is not implemented or funded, Sevilla says they are conducting their own hands-on research with the pro-bono support of Atin’to Development Services led by Engr. Dave Garcia.
“With the limited support of Environmental Management Bureau NCR Director Minda Osorio,” Garcia said, “NCR Toda has been able to hold seminar-meetings, which resulted in a program we call Tricyclean.”
Garcia said, “Technology providers, including gadgets, additives, lubricants and electric vehicles, etc., will always claim their sole technology can do everything, but we have discovered no single technology can do the trick if the engine on a blow-by condition. There are also many factors causing emissions from poor fuel quality, poor air-fuel ratio and lubrication, etc. He claimed 80 percent to 90 percent can also be attributed to appropriate maintenance systems. He says NCR Toda aims to reduce emissions by over 99 percent, even a 0.1 emission difference with e-trikes.
Service maintenance centers needed. ”Without any government support, we have been conducting our own researches and techno combinations,” Garcia said, adding that they have been tasked by NCR Toda to design a module of a tricycle service maintenance center, which can be funded even by a fraction of the Road Users’ Tax’s Special Vehicle Pollution Control Fund (SVPCF), now about P9 billion in untapped funds.
After all, tricycles, because of their sheer number, also contribute massively to the road users’ tax, of which 80 percent is spent on the repair of national roads, although they ban tricycles from using them, and 7.5 percent on traffic signs and foot bridges in major roads.
As tricycles, particularly two-stroke engines, are blamed for being the most pollutive in terms of fuel-to-emission conversion ratios, they deserve some form of support from the SVPCF, which shares 7.5 percent of total road users’ tax. After all, tricycles drivers are the most marginalized among transport groups.
E-mail: mikealunan@yahoo.com