Formula E is fighting to fix Manila's choking traffic chaos

As Formula E’s new season gets ready to kick off on December 15 in Saudi Arabia, the company behind the championship is trying to turn Manila’s iconic jeepneys green
A jeepney in Manila, 2017Getty Images / Noel Celis

Since the end of the Second World War, the jeepneys – cheap albeit always crowded, uber-colourful buses – have been ruling the road in Manila, the capital of the Philippines with a population of 25 million people. But with its fumes choking the air, and hulking frame causing the world’s worst traffic, the iconic, technicolour bus is long due an eco-friendly overhaul.

And it’s finally happening. A clutch of electric vehicle firms now race to renovate Manila’s 200,000-or-so fleet of jeepneys. Among the frontrunners is a multinational QEV, founded in Madrid but with wings all over the world. QEV Tech, based in the Barcelona, creates charging points and performance motors (the term “engine” applies only to gas power).

In Singapore, the firm has paired with Microsoft and ABB on fast-chargers for electric vehicles. QEV Global owner Enrique Bañuelos is a founder of Formula E, the first all-electric, single-seater championship – which, like its petrol-headed counterpart Formula One, pits teams at glamorous Grands Prix worldwide. QEV Tech CEO Miguel Valldecabres is also the championship's former CFO, and the company is one of its original founders – though it is no longer affiliated.

The BBC has announced it will broadcast every Formula E race of the 2018-19 season, which begins in Saudi Arabia on December 15. QEV even runs a team – India's Mahindra – whose swooping cars can reach speeds of up to 140mph. And while navigating Manila’s labyrinthine transport system may seem an altogether different challenge, there are more similarities than one might think.

Jeepneys, which rarely top 20mph amid the mayhem of a Manila rush hour, might not seem the obvious candidate for QEV’s skills. But high-performance motors, for which neither price nor efficiency is a prime factor, allow a greater experimental leeway for other projects, says Monika Mikac, QEV Tech’s chief business officer. “For jeepneys, the focus is more on reliability and affordable price,” Mikac says. “But we have decided to use the same team, because we think racing provides a competitive environment where it's almost like you compress five years of testing on the road in one season of racing.”

Jeepneys, which first appeared when American GIs left old Jeeps behind on the archipelago after their war in the Pacific, are a totem of Philippine ingenuity. Most are decorated luridly; part-Mad Max, part Wacky Races, as iconically Manileñoas adobo pork or giant Catholic cathedrals.

Nobody knows whether the word jeepney is a portmanteau of Jeep and jitney (a term for antiquated shared taxis), or derives from the practice of sitting knee-to-knee with fellow passengers. Either way, it stuck – and no trip to Manila is complete without hitching aboard one of the spluttering old barges, passing a fistful of pesos to the driver (the average ride costs 12 pence) and being assaulted by deafening exhaust gargles, and the black clouds they belch out. There are routes but no set stops, similar to the marshrutkas that speed though Russian cities.

Read more: The 2018 Formula E car is stupidly good – and that's bad for Tesla

For over a decade, however, Manileños have complained that jeepneys are an outdated scourge. They comprise just two per cent of the city’s traffic but 80 per cent of its vehicular pollution. It is not uncommon, walking along major overpasses, to see bright-painted jeepneys locked bumper to bumper, some almost sideways, like massive Tetris blocks. No wonder that, according to travel app Waze, Metro Manila is home to the worst congestion on Earth.

The Philippine government has, since the early 2000s, signalled its intent to move away from jeepneys. Current president Rodrigo Duterte wants those over 15 years of age removed soon. To drivers, whose protests against the proposed phase-out have brought the capital to its knees, he has offered scant succour. “Son of a bitch, suffer hardship and hunger. I don’t care,” he said in October.

Enter electric buses, which are already in place worldwide, and which market analyst IDTechEx sees as a $500 billion market opportunity. Buses, which go slow and can carry huge battery packs, are a perfect foil for electric mobility. China has rolled out dozens of schemes. Last year, 12 major cities including London, Paris, Mexico City and Los Angeles agreed to procure only electric buses from 2025.

The Philippine government has promised to back “alternative driving approaches” to the tune of 1.5bn pesos (£22.5bn). Sarao Motors, which updated the original, post-war jeepney, has signed a joint agreement with electric vehicle maker Le Guider International, as the battle to become the new king of the road heats up.

The Electric Vehicle Association of the Philippines (EVAP) has become the chief node for e-vehicle development in the country, forging over 500 partnerships and running summits about the future of cleaner transport in the Philippines. Its first e-jeepneys hit the streets of Makati, Metro Manila’s shiny business district, 10 years back.

QEV’s Philippines division, backed by banking and property magnate Endika Aboitiz, wants instead to convert existing jeepneys. It plans to overhaul 50,000 by 2020. At 500,000 pesos (£7,500), the conversion is, according to QEV, three times cheaper than buying a new e-jeepney. QEV claims drivers will save around 40,000 pesos (£600) each year on energy, and the country will avoid 3 per cent of crude oil imports.

Audrey Mae Dy Peñaranda, general manager of QEV Philippines, says the company’s business model is built around its cost to drivers, and that Formula E has helped: “Like any R&D tech centre, the specs and parameters had to be clearly understood, to match whatever performance one would expect.” But an e-jeepney would have to be comparable to its predecessor, she adds, saying that the company’s engineers have been working on the vehicle over the last two years, producing several prototypes along the way.

The firm has already installed over 200 fast-chargers across Metro Manila alongside a local mall chain, and is providing drivers with so-called Astrokits, with which they can convert their own vehicles. It’s a model that goes well beyond the jeepney, though – and even beyond Manila. “Similar e-kits can be used in transforming many vehicles in other emerging countries,” Mikac says, adding that talks are underway in Latin America and Africa.

Astrokits might hardly be the same as a Team Mahindra pit crew. But just as those crews can transform a Formula E race, so QEV hopes it will leap to the front of the race to update one of the world’s most emblematic forms of public transport. And it may just free up Metro Manila’s streets doing so.

This article was originally published by WIRED UK