Part
01
of five
Part
01
Electric Tuk-Tuks: Pakistan
As of 2018, there were no electric vehicles in Pakistan, however, the government is taking initiatives in this regard and seeks to convert fossil-fuel-based vehicles to electric vehicles over the next 5 years. Some details for the state of the electric vehicle industry in Pakistan are given below.
- There were no electric vehicles in Pakistan as of 2018 and all of the vehicles depend on the use of fossil fuels. Since there are no electric vehicles, it implies that there are no electric tuk-tuks in the country as well and their absence also means that there are no manufacturers in the country.
- Although the number currently stands at zero, the government is taking measures and has set targets of introducing 100,000 electric cars as well as 500,000 two-, three-, and four-wheeled electric vehicles in the next 5 years.
- The total number of tuk-tuks (non-electric) in the country is not available. There were 105,684 registered rickshaws in the largest metropolitan city in Pakistan, Karachi, as of December 31, 2011. The number of unregistered rickshaws may be higher.
- The total number of private rickshaws in Lahore, one of the largest cities in Pakistan, is close to 500,000. Faisalabad, which is another large city in the country, has close to 70,000 motorcycle rickshaws, also known as 'Qingqis'.
- Three-wheeler sales in the country were 156,497 units in June 2018, which rose from 129,342 units in June 2017.
Research Strategy
We started our research by trying to locate the number of tuk-tuks in Pakistan, however, the total number of tuk-tuks in the country cannot be determined. We went through credible media sources, e.g. The Express Tribune, Geo News, etc., in an attempt to find news relating to the use of tuk-tuks in the country. However, this strategy did not yield any results besides some numbers for some of the large cities in the country.
Alternatively, we decided to look through industry reports to find out the number of tuk-tuks in the country. Through this strategy, we found a report from an institute, which reported that the number of electric vehicles in the country was 0% in 2018. This implied that the country had no manufacturers of electric tuk-tuks and the number of electric tuk-tuks is also zero.
As a final attempt, we decided to look through government reports but did not find any fruitful results. We found some reports that provided insights into the automobile manufacturing companies operating in the country but those reports primarily focused on cars. An example report can be found here.
Since the government has only recently announced plans to increase the number of electric vehicles, no details could be found, specifically for the programs supporting the acquisition of electric tuk-tuks in the country.