“A transport system can be conceptualized as the set of relationships between

nodes, networks, and demand”,which according to transportgeography.org are

what transport systems define as. Transport systems have existed for centuries
and have helped humanity move to places. There are many transport systems,
but I will list the 5 most common transport systems that all people use. The first
transport system being road transport with people first walking on roads that later
developed with people riding horses on roads, then to wagons, bikes, cars and
lastly trucks. Next is rail transport, which helps trains move people, raw materials,
finished goods, cargo and waste. Then came air transport that helped people
travel and helped companies move cargo. The last transport is Maritime transport
and it is one of the oldest forms of transport alongside road transport and has
improved over time allowing humans to travel for vacation and being used to ship
goods. Even though the points I mentioned are all positive, there are
consequences to using the transport system, specifically in road transport where
hybrid cars have become increasingly popular with statista.com stating that 2.9
million hybrid cars were sold in 2022. Hybrids are a better alternative to
diesel/gasoline cars, but still produce 51.6 pounds of carbon dioxide every 100
miles according to science.howstuffworks.com. That is why I will present my
group topic question which is, "To what extent do Hybrid cars affect the
environment?". I will find out the global, national, and local perspective and give a
solution in the end.

Hybrid cars are cars that have a gasoline engine and an electric motor. The first
modern hybrid was introduced in 1997 with the Toyota Prius and have sold over
8 million Prius's according to greencarreports.com. Hybrid cars are praised by
people for reducing carbon emissions and for being a better alternative to
gasoline cars. However, according to Transportandenvironment.com, they have
researched across Europe on hybrid and have found out that hybrid cars produce
more than 2 and half times more carbon dioxide emissions than what laboratory
test have shown. Furthermore, the analysis have found out that hybrid cars 117g
of carbon dioxide per kilometer than what official test showed which was 44g of
carbon dioxide per km. Furthermore, on researchgate.net, a researcher named
Luigi Maffei has created a graph which shows the maximum noise levels
between gasoline, diesel and hybrid cars. In the graph, shows the maximum
noise levels from 20mph to 50mph and in the graph, there is a slight decrease in
noise from hybrid cars to gasoline/diesel. The statistics ranging from 58db for
hybrid, 58db from gasoline, 61db from diesel to 70db from hybrid, 72db from
gasoline and 73db from diesel. These statistics show no significant improvement
of noise reduction from hybrid .This makes hybrid cars seem not different from
conventional cars as they are branded from car companies to be "alternative to
conventional cars". From what we can see from evidence, that is not the case
and instead, hybrid cars seems too just as harmful as regular diesel/gasoline
cars. Moreover, hybrid cars batteries are made out of lithium and according to
www.storen.tech, less than 5% of lithium ion batteries are recycled in America
and the United states government throws away about 3 billion batteries a year.
These sources prove how hybrid cars affect the world globally.

Pakistan has a huge automotive industry that according to invest.gov.pk,

contributes to about 2.8% of Pakistan gdp. Invest.gov.pk has also said that
Pakistan automobile industry is the fastest growing industry in all of Asia with
production and sales valued at 171% to 172.5% between 2014 and 2018. This
would be a good thing if it wasn't for pollution which according to bbc.com,
Pakistan ranks second highest in terms of pollution with 43% of air pollutant
emissions coming from transport according to macropakistani.com. Furthermore,
according to frontiersin.org, 310,000 deaths have occurred in Pakistan due to air
pollution. For Pakistan, hybrid cars would be a solution, right?Well, they aren't
because according to pakwheels.com, hybrid cars require at least 4000 pounds
of carbon during production. Furthermore, according to a study done by the
Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, they had compared a hybrid car
with a conventional and though the hybrid car did score low in terms of CO2
emissions per km with 70 for hybrid and 218 for conventional, hybrid cars still
produce a lot of CO2 emissions with the already huge air pollution in Pakistan.
Lastly, in the study, the hybrid car cost more than conventional car with the hybrid
costing 6,200,000 rupees and the conventional costing 2,799,000 which makes it
harder for Pakistan to reduce air pollution as most big/medium sized modern
hybrid cars cost too much.

The biggest cities in Pakistan are Karachi, Lahore, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi,

Gujranwala, Peshawar, Multan, Hyderabad, Islamabad and Quetta according to
statistics. All of these cities range in population from 1 to 14 million. But due to
Pakistan's high carbon emissions rate, the air quality has drastically decreased
with statistics from statista.com, showing us that in 2022, Pakistan produced 200
million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. These statistics prove how
Pakistan should switch to renewable energy sources, but according to the
National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NERPA), Pakistan only uses 7% of
renewable energy. This would make hybrid cars useful in reducing air pollution in
these cities, especially Lahore. Well, unfortunately, I couldn't find any information
about how hybrid cars affect the environment locally in Pakistan. We can assume
that they won't be too significant in reducing air pollution in Lahore as according
to iqair.com, Lahore is ranked the most air polluted city in the world. Overall,
hybrid cars do impact the environment in Pakistan.

In conclusion, Hybrid cars do affect the environment to some extent with hybrid
cars still emitting carbon emissions. Some solutions that governments and global
entities can use to mitigate the negative consequences of hybrid cars would be to
force car companies to give correct official CO2 emissions tests as in the first
paragraph, i mentioned how car companies like BMW and Peugeot gave
incorrect CO2 test to the public. The Second solution is for the Pakistan
government to make Hybrid cars cheaper so that middle class citizens can afford
to buy them. The third and last solution is for the UN to intervene and force car
companies to lower the CO2 emissions from their cars to near zero CO2
emissions. I could have improved my research by adding more expert/personal
testimony and research on multiple search engines, for example, bing, ask.com
etc. I could have also ask help from Maam Bakhtawar to further improve my
report. I learned alot about my topic and how great hybrid cars are and how bad
they can be, and to be honest, my perspective has changed as i thought nothing
about hybrid cars, but now i can see the impact hybrid cars actually made, so i
will end this off by saying that i found the answer to my group topic question
which is, "To what extent do Hybrid cars affect the environment?"