EPA wants to swap scooter policy for new clean-air plan

The government's policy of promoting electric scooters has failed and subsidies to encourage their purchase should be cut in order to invest in other air pollution strategies, Lin Jun-yi (林俊義), head of the Environmental Protection Administration, said yesterday.

But manufacturers of electric scooters, legislators and aca-demic experts said the subsidies should be maintained because air quality will eventually improve if the market for electric scooters opens up.

At a public hearing held at the Legislative Yuan yesterday, manufacturers and legislators said the administration's idea of slashing the subsidy for an electric scooter from NT$31,000 to NT$6,000 was unacceptable.

Lin disagreed, saying the planned cut should be carried out because traditional lead-acid batteries installed in electric scooters were not as environmentally friendly as fuel cells.

Administration officials also said consumers had complained about the inconvenience of electric scooters, saying they were heavy and their range was short.

In Taiwan, the environmental officials said, using lead-acid batteries to supply energy for electric scooters was the most commonly used technology.

They said the weight of this type of battery slowed electric scooters too much.

Lin said that because the technology for using fuel cells in electric cars was not being used in Taiwan, environmental officials would visit US manufac-turers next year to help develop the technology.

Jou Jwo-huei (周卓煇), a materials science and engineering professor at National Tsinghua University, said at the public hearing that promoting electric scooters was Taiwan's first step to move toward a "green 21st century."

"In the past six years the number of manufacturers of electric scooters has increased from one to seven and the number of electric scooters has increased from 40 to 12,000," Jou said, adding that the future of electric scooters in Taiwan was promising.