An evaluation of the hybrid car technology for the Mexico Mega City

The introduction of hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) technology in the private car fleet of Mexico City is evaluated in terms of private costs, energy, public health and CO2 emission benefits. In addition to constructing plausible scenarios for urban expansion, emission, car fleet, and fuel consumption for year 2026 and comparing them with a 2004 base case, a time series is built to obtain accumulated economic benefits. Experimental techniques were used to build a vehicle library for a car simulator that included a Prius 2002, chosen as the HEV technology representative for this work. The simulator is used to estimate the emissions and fuel consumption of the car fleet scenarios. In the context of an urban scenario for year 2026, a complex air quality model obtains the concentrations of criterion pollutants corresponding to these scenarios.Using a technology penetration model, the hybridized fleet starts unfolding in year 2009 reaching to 20% in 2026. In this year, the hybridized fleet resulted in reductions of about 10% of CO2 emissions, and yielded reductions in daytime mean concentrations of up to 7% in ozone and 3.4% in PM2.5 compared to the 2004 base case. These reductions are concentrated in the densely populated areas of Mexico City. By building a time series of costs and benefits it is shown that, depending on fuel prices and using a 5% return rate, positive accumulated benefits (CO2 benefits + energy benefits + public health benefits − private costs) will start generating in year 2015 reaching between 2.8 and 4.5 billion US Dlls in 2026. Another modernized private fleet consisting exclusively of Tier I and II cars did not yield appreciable results, signaling that a change in private car technology towards HEV's is needed to obtain significant accumulated benefits.

► The introduction of Hybrid Electric Vehicle technology is evaluated for Mexico City in terms of fuel, greenhouse gas emissions, public health benefits and private costs using a range of multidisciplinary tools.
► Using plausible fleet, emission and urban scenarios, a time series is built to obtain accumulated benefits and costs to get a better economic perspective.
► Under the conditions of our scenarios, it is determined that after 5 years of negative benefits, positive benefits start to accumulate, showing that the introduction of HEV technology is a feasible policy both economically and environmentally.