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10/09/25 Why aren't there more electric cars and busses in Brazil?Alan - @alan279

I don't know about buses, but as for cars, I think that there's a lot of geographic variation right now.  Here in Manaus we see a LOT of electric cars.  My husband and I ride Ubers all the time, and I'd say that one in every five or so Ubers we get into is an electric from a Chinese company.  The drivers uniformly rave about them, and the Chinese are giving great deals to buy market share:  eight year warranties on the motors and batteries, and a free home charger with every car, the last I heard.  Drivers drive all day, charge the car overnight, and they're ready to go again in the morning.

Our strange geography makes this a uniquely convenient Brazilian city for an electric car driver, though.  While the município is enormous on the map (over 11,400 sq km, about twice the size of the Federal District), most of it is forest and farms, and the actual urban core is compact, about 427 sq km.  Almost 2.3 million people live in that core, though, and unlike residents of other major Brazilian cities they don't go on a lot of road trips, because there's almost nowhere to go:  except for the highway north to Boa Vista and to the Venezuelan border beyond, and some roads to a few nearby interior cities, there are no roads linking Manaus to the rest of the country, at least until BR-319 is finally repaved.   So the lack of charging station infrastructure is less of a problem here than it would be in any other major Brazilian city, because drivers can drive around town all day, and make money if that's their job, and plan their trips to never risk of being caught without a charge, because they're never really far from their home chargers.

@alan279 I see lots of electric cars here in Niteroi. Mostly Chinese, e.g., BYD, and also Volvo.

The Uber drivers in Ilhéus tell me that they pay a fraction of the cost of gasoline to charge their electric cars. The small BYD is nice, the larger BYD model is nicer, with lots of legroom in the back seat. The Great Wall car is similar. The driver of the Great Wall told me he bought it on the internet and it was delivered to Ilhéus. I wonder how he will get the car serviced. Same for the BYDs.

Electric cars seem like a good solution in Ilhéus.