Exodus: The EV Car Effect in Poorer Countries

It had been at least 15 years since I last had a job in Jamaica, but a recent job gave me the chance to have another look at this enigmatic but super interesting country. I have always been fascinated by Jamaica; it struggles like many other poorer nations, but with good beer, great coffee, great food and great music, to me, it always offers something more. Because it is somewhat difficult (and occasionally even dangerous) to get around, I always rely on agents and drivers to get me from place to place. I really enjoy that, since it gives me the chance to feel a little like James Bond, but even more so it provides me with a chance to chat with the drivers about the local conditions.

This time my driver was Delray. Like so many Jamaicans he was an intelligent, helpful and thoughtful companion.

Delray had a working agreement with the agent, and the car he drove me around the island in was his own car. In many ways Jamaica was the same as 15 years ago, but now Kingston had a few nice hotels and there were many fewer motorcycles on the street. Like many poorer countries, the roads were mostly filled with cars 10 to 20 years old, intermixed with an occasional new car, probably owned by a high roller.

When he picked me up at the airport, the radio was playing Whitney Houston. I kidded him and said that, in Jamaica, I should not be listening to a singer from New Jersey.

He handed me his cellphone, and while he drove I managed to decipher the Japanese car radio, and to get it to sync with his cellphone. Exodus fired up in all its glory.  

We discussed mutual politics and grandchildren. I mentioned that in the next 15 years there probably would be a large number of EV’s on the road in Jamaica. Second hand EV’s should be very useful in the country, even if they had lost some battery range. Delray apparently had already thought about that and he noted that he rarely drove more than 200 miles, even on a busy day. So a full charge in the morning, even on an EV that was down to that range, could do the trick. He was excited about the thought of reduced operating costs, but he felt that the prices for EV’s were still too high.

That led me to tell him about my recent used EV purchase.

Through Carvana I had bought a one-year-old 2023 Chevy Bolt EUV with 19,000 miles for $20,000 all in. He said he was surprised at that low price, but it was still out of his range financially. His car was a 2015 Nissan minivan with 150,000 miles, bought the previous year for $5,000 on a second-hand car website.

With import duties and registration and some maintenance he estimated he spent just below $10,000. Since Jamaica is a righthand drive country, it was a used import from Japan, but it was clean and looked younger than its age. Surprising for a 2015, it had Bluetooth, and for Delray this was his first car with a handsfree phone [which certainly made me more comfortable with his calls in the busy Kingston traffic].

Delray’s financial example shows how different economics in poorer countries are, and when we design for a sustainable world, we need to continually keep that in mind. Poorer countries run on a much smaller financial scale, and small businesses in poorer countries are started with a few thousand dollars while small businesses in richer countries take tens of thousands to start.

Since gas mileage of cars is pretty much the same, the price of fuel becomes a much more significant factor in personal and business finances in poorer countries. To save on the cost of fuel, poorer countries would like to invest in more efficient technologies, but generally lack the purchasing power to make the investment. This results in a Catch 22, but thanks to containerization, there is a work around.  

In richer countries it is difficult to realize that a very large portion of the world does not buy new cars, or for that matter new kitchen appliances or toilet bowls. Most of what is purchased in poorer countries has been discarded in richer countries and repaired and reconditioned locally. This is both good and bad. It is good from a reduced waste point of view and it is good because it is the most cost-effective way of providing access to expensive modern technologies in poorer countries. It is also good because it becomes a very effective technology training tool. Most poorer countries can fix technologies for which the knowledge does not even exist in richer countries. 

However, it is not so good when one realizes that these countries will continue to spew carbon and waste energy way past the date that these technologies have been retired in richer countries.

When I replaced the range in our kitchen, my wife’s Nigerian aide asked if she could have the old range to ship to Nigeria. It boggles the mind that shipping an old range from New Jersey to Nigeria is financially viable, but that is the result of the magic efficiency of containerization. Once my roof solar panels can be economically replaced for newer more efficient panels, I hope that the older somewhat degraded panels will find their way to Nigeria or Jamaica to provide people there a few more years of sustainable energy before they will be recycled. This is not “dump your junk” charity, it is an economically attractive proposition for poorer countries. The trick is improvement, not instant perfection.  

Newer technologies may not always transition well to poorer countries when they are too complicated to maintain or repair.  I would guess that EV’s will be easier to maintain. Even though there is often confounding software involved in the operation of EV’s, software has the advantage of being very portable as compared to sourcing spare parts. Meanwhile, the complexity and maintenance load on the mechanical and electric parts is actually less than for an IC car. This conflicts with the recent rise in popularity of plug-in hybrid EVs. I have already noted that PHEV’s are, at best, a necessary evil if an EV cannot do the job, because, in essence, EV’s will eventually run on zero carbon electricity but PHEV’s will continue to belch CO2 over the life of the car.

Taking into account that PHEV’s are incredibly complicated compared to EV’s, with more than double the parts, PHEV’s may simply be rejected by poorer countries and be sent to the scrapheap in favor of keeping older IC cars running or hopefully in favor of much less expensive EV’s.    

Somewhere out there I hear readers wondering if poorer countries have the knowledge to maintain EVs.

This is where I so much enjoy interacting with people in poorer countries. There’s no doubt that today this knowledge does not exist in poorer countries; but a country that can keep 21st century IC cars running and repair cellphones, undoubtedly has the talent to keep EV’s running. The one thing that will be amazing is how quickly they will develop that knowledge.