The New Neighbor across the Street: An Outlook for Battery Electric Vehicles Adoption in Brazil

Abstract

As the automotive industry steers towards electromobility and electric vehicle adoption surges, Brazil and other Latin-American countries remain laggards. The Brazilian scenario exhibits unique features, such as a powerful automotive sector with large investments in internal combustion engine technology and a well-established biofuels market based on flex-fuel technology. Although energy security, urban air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions mitigation, and technological advantage have been common drivers for the adoption of electric vehicles worldwide, the Brazilian immediate motivations are different, and the biofuels business ecosystem is likely to transform the path for electromobility. High tag price and public charging infrastructure absence have deeply discouraged electric vehicles adoption. A lack of regulation and a national consensus about the role of electric vehicles have been notorious. In fact, only in 2018 did the electricity regulatory agency (ANEEL) issue a resolution permitting the sale of electricity for recharging. The objective of this review was to create an outlook of the Brazilian transportation landscape. We identified relevant players, public charging infrastructure initiatives, market and other barriers, and regulation actions by consulting academic literature, media sources, and reports. We do not claim to predict the evolution of electrification. Instead, we aim to consolidate the information which can be used for decision support or strategy definition among entrepreneurs or policymakers. The main findings here are the necessity of a model for electrification able to create a synergy with biofuels and the urgency of having well-defined policies on what Brazil wants from electromobility.