Gopal Kumar Mohoto [1] is an engineer from Bangladesh with a drive. A sustainable electric drive. With Advanced Dynamics [2] he works on solar recharged battery swapping for small vehicles, e-bikes and retrofitting fossil fuel cars into solar electric vehicles.

Priscilla: What ethics in electronics are you working on?

Gopal “I have been working in electric energy and vehicle sector in Bangladesh for 10 years. Our big project is retrofitting existing gasoline vehicles into electric vehicles. Here we are also saving of lots of electronics; building a new EV there are thousands electronic components needed but when we are retrofitting an existing vehicle, we just need the basic electronics to run the power train and we try to use everything already in the vehicle. We are developing vehicle solar body parts and the electric powertrain in our R&D facility in Bangladesh and increasing the safety and intelligence of the vehicle with AI. We are now retrofitting the old vehicles in a 200-300 private fleet so that in time the whole fleet will be electric. In 2019 we did a tour with our own electric vehicle with a solar roof from one end of Bangladesh to the other to prove that our technology works. That was our first prototype and now we have an order of 50 such vehicles that we will hand over to our customer in January.”

Priscilla: What is the most important ethical question in your field?

Gopal “Not a question but a challenge. What is holding us back is the business-as-usual mentality. We are the only one doing this in Bangladesh. We are ethical in energy service and energy saving and by upcycling electronic components but other manufacturers are still just trying to sell their products and forget about them. In some cases, they offer recycling, but only very, very limited do they offer upcycling. There are few global initiatives that help us grow like the Climate-KIC [3] with the Climate Launchpad [4] and Global Solutions [5]. They are helping us to make my voice loud to get out of this business-as-usual mentality. Last month I attended the UN SDG action awards at Bonn, they had the slogan ‘flip the script’ and I really liked this idea.”

Priscilla: What would you like to include in an Electronics Code of Ethics?

Gopal “Upcycling should be mainstream. Most ICs in the modern world are programmable so we have to think about upcycling them in another application. I think this is the only way for a sustainable future; not just in electronics but also in mechanics. By this era this should be one of the major policies for the OEMs; to buy back their product and upcycle it. Retrofitting means you are doing something new in an existing system and upcycling means you are increasing the uses of the same product. Retrofitting and upcycling will go hand in hand. “

Priscilla: Impossible question: Should the Global South focus on hydro /solar/ wind?

Gopal “I don’t think there is one-fit-for-all. Nepal is mostly dependent on hydro-electricity, but for us hydro is not applicable because we have limited high land. Solar really works in Bangladesh. Bangladesh has the highest concentration of solar home systems in the whole world. Many houses in a village have very small systems of 50-100 Watt.”

Web Links

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/in/gopal-kumar-mohoto-7559a39a/

[2] http://adv-dynamics.com/

[3] https://www.climate-kic.org/

[4] https://climatelaunchpad.org/

[5] https://www.global-solutions-initiative.org/