Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 13
By Fatih Karimov– Trend:
Motorcycle is a popular vehicle in Iran, in particular in the capital city of Tehran, where people use it to bypass the megacity’s heavy traffic flows.
Over 11 million motorcycles are used in Iran, and service life of at least 4.7 million of them has ended and they should be scrapped. In Tehran, one of the must polluted cities of the world, motorcycles are used for transportation of passengers and cargo.
In recent years there has been a wave of allegations, claiming motorcycles are the major reason for the air pollution in Tehran, some claiming they produce multiple times more pollution than cars.
Amid all of these, the country’s decades old motorcycle production is suffering various problems and reportedly over 70 percent of the manufacturing units have stopped production this year.
For the first time in the last 20 years only 40,000 motorcycles were manufactured in the country during the first half of the current fiscal year (started March 20), Abolfazl Hejazi, head of the Syndicate for Motorbike Producers of Iran, said, YJC (Young Journalists Club website) reported.
The figure indicates a huge fall compared to 400,000 motorcycle production in the same period of the preceding year, Hejazi said.
He added that in 2015 the Iranian government issued a decree for halting production of motorcycles with carburettor engines till October 2016.
As a result, Iranian producers tried to manufacture as more motorcycles as possible till deadline, he said, adding that companies’ depots are full at the moment.
Hejazi further said that Iranian consumers prefer motorcycles with carburettor engine due to its lower price.
It should be noted that the decreasing trend of motorbike production is not limited to this year and the process was started several years ago. Production plunged from 1.5 million in 2006 to less than 400,000 in 2015.