Source: M24
Interviewed at InterCambio, the coordinator of the MOVÉS Sustainable Mobility Project, Ariel Álvarez, explained its characteristics and detailed the current facilities to join it.
It is “a project” in force since February and that will last for “four years” with the aim of “promoting efficient and sustainable mobility” through the subsidized acquisition of electric vehicles.
The range of vehicles is wide and ranges from “bicycles and tricycles” to “buses” and cars for private use. The project is “financed by international funds” articulated by “UNDP”, while the “executing” institutions in Uruguay are “MIEM, MVOT and MA” in coordination with “the Uruguayan Agency for International Cooperation”.
The project is made up of four stages, the first and current being a “technological test” in bicycles and tricycles while the start of a pilot plan is being refined to do it also in “public passenger transport”.
It aims to “favor the incorporation of electric buses” that also incorporate other accessibilities such as “ground floor” to attend to different physical disabilities as well as “gender aspects”, Álvarez said.
The State, through MIEM and MEF, implemented “a subsidy to buy electric buses at the price of diesel”, the subsidy covers the difference in price between one type of unit and another, on the order of $ 200,000 on average.
“The other thing” that the project is promoting “is urban freight transport”, a function for which “utility vehicles” are used mostly, while the program also encourages the use of “electric tricycles (…) replacing motorcycles ”. “And the same with the pedal bike,” he said.
He recalled that the State continues to work at national level in the implementation of “the electric route” in order to have “a charging point in each Department before the end of the year”, and with the medium-term perspective of having one installed “each 60 kilometers ”.
Álvarez also highlighted the implementation between the MEF and the MIEM of “exemptions from the Imesi” of variable percentage, and discounted electricity rates through UTE, to promote the acquisition of private electric vehicles.