Electric cars transform healthcare in Bolivia’s high-altitude city
Dr. Carlos Ortuno recently took a small electric car to the outskirts of Bolivia’s capital, La Paz, to check on a patient. He wasn’t sure if the car could handle the steep, winding streets of the high-altitude city. When asked about his experience driving a Quantum, Bolivia’s first electric vehicle, Ortuno said, “I thought that the city’s topography was going to struggle, but it’s a great climber.” Quantum was the first electric vehicle ever produced in Bolivia. The distinction from a fuel-controlled vehicle is colossal.”
As part of a government-sponsored program that connects doctors with patients in outlying neighbourhoods, Ortuno visited their homes in a golf cart-sized vehicle. The municipality of La Paz used a fleet of six electric vehicles produced by Quantum Motors, the sole manufacturer of electric vehicles in the country, to launch the “Doctor in your house” program last month. It’s a ground-breaking concept. It safeguards the strength of those out of luck, while safeguarding the climate and supporting nearby creation,” La Paz City hall leader Ivan Arias said.
Quantum Motors, a company founded four years ago by a group of businessmen who believe EVs will transform the auto industry in Bolivia, a lithium-rich nation where cheap, subsidized imported gasoline is still the norm, may also benefit from the program. The Quantum can travel 50 miles (80 kilometers) before needing to be recharged, moves at no more than 35 mph (56 kph), and is built like a box. The $7,600 car’s creators hope that the public will embrace electric vehicles and rekindle hopes of a lithium-powered economy.
Jose Carlos Marquez, Quantum Motors’ general manager, states, “E-mobility will prevail worldwide in the next few years, but it will be different in different countries.” With its fast, self-driving cars, Tesla will dominate the US market. However, because our streets are more like those of Bombay and New Delhi than they are like those of California, cars in Latin America will be smaller. However, it has been challenging for the company to promote e-mobility in the South American nation. In a long time since it delivered its most memorable EVs, Quantum Engines has sold scarcely 350 vehicles in Bolivia and an undisclosed number of units in Peru and Paraguay. The organization is likewise set to open a manufacturing plant in Mexico in the not so distant future, albeit no further subtleties have been given on the extent of creation there.
Despite this, Quantum Motors’ wager on battery-powered automobiles makes sense in light of Bolivia’s resources. Bolivia has the largest lithium reserve in the world—an essential component of electric batteries—with an estimated 21 million tons. However, the country has yet to extract and industrialize its vast resources of the metal. In the meantime, fossil fuels continue to power the vast majority of vehicles on the road, and the government continues to invest millions of dollars in subsidies for imported fuel, which is sold at a price that is half that of domestic fuel.
“The Quantum (vehicle) may be modest, however I don’t think it has the limit of a fuel-controlled vehicle,” says Marco Antonio Rodriguez, a grease monkey in La Paz, in spite of the fact that he recognizes individuals could alter their perspective once the public authority stops gas endowments. Notwithstanding the difficulties ahead, the creators of the Quantum vehicle are confident that projects like “Medico en tu casa,” which is planned to twofold in size and reach out to different areas one year from now, will assist with supporting creation and produce more EVs across the district. Marquez declares, “We are prepared to expand.” Through July, all of our inventory has been sold out.
