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Simple CO2 Emission Comparison

If 50 people travel in an electric bus, the emission will be 11 times less than if they travel by electric car. It would also be 36 times less than if they travel by a fossil fuel-burning car.


Those are statistics that were released by Swedish transport operator Västtrafik. They then

commissioned an ad agency, Forsman & Bodenfors, to create an easy to understand comparison of the emissions of each of those travel options. The agency's solution was to use actual vehicles piled on top of one another to illustrate the difference, in the style of a simple bar chart.


“The initial brief was to highlight the huge climate benefits of electric buses. Västtrafik also wanted to tap into the ongoing debate about electric cars. They are indeed necessary, but not the whole solution. Basically, Västtrafik wanted us to create an ‘iconic image’ that could symbolize everything that’s great about public transport. Quite a challenge,” Pontus Caresten Lychou, copywriter at Forsman & Bodenfors, explained to Adweek.


Cars piled up on top of each other to resemble a bar chart
Credit: Forsman & Bodenfors

The statistics are based on the vehicle’s entire life cycle, including manufacturing and operation, with each car holding the Swedish average of 1.4 people.


“With this campaign, we wanted to make statistics available to more people, because a prerequisite for reaching the climate goals is that we share the resources. We need to travel more together, it is simply not enough to replace millions of fossil cars with millions of electric cars,” added Lars Backman, CEO of Västtrafik.

 
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