Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry is never short of unique, workable ideas. After the lunch of his famous lunar calendar application, which helped the countrymen plan and celebrate Eidul Azha very well, and later commence Muharram without any controversy because of its unmatched accuracy, the maverick minister has now unveiled environment-friendly motorcycles and rickshaws, which will run on rechargeable batteries. The country, which has long been facing challenges on environment and fuel consumption fronts, will be able to conserve energy and make the environment safe if his plans are realised. He made a test ride of a battery-powered motorcycle and a rickshaw on the premises of the Pakistan Council for Renewable Energy and Technologies. Even though mass transit is the mother of all transport-related solutions, life in a Pakistani city or town is hard to lead without a motorcycle and rickshaw. From errands to hard tasks like pick and drop of schoolchildren and so on, the usage of motorcycles and rickshaw is frequent and unavoidable. If Chaudhry wants to make a visible difference to environmental issues, he should ride a bicycle and make bicycle riding a popular trend. That will, however, require spreading awareness of traffic rules and making our roads bicycle-friendly. Automobile experts call battery-operated vehicles the ultimate future of transport, and an apt way to minimise dependency on POL products. Pakistan, being one of the largest users of motorcycles and rickshaws in the world, will benefit a lot from electronic technology-driven transport, which will also help combat carbon emissions in the environment. In the last decade, Pakistan did wonderful experiments with modern transport modes, mostly in mass transit, in large cities like Lahore, Islamabad, Multan and now in Karachi. Under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, many road networks have been completed. That is going to raise the standard of living as well as the economy. So far as the ministry and science and technology’s initiative on renewable energy-powered transport is concerned, the ministry is not a manufacturing house. Its job is to provide such policies which help manufacturers, innovators, entrepreneurs and academicians to flourish scientific works, which have yet to gain roots in our parts of the world. Introducing and investing on imported, ready-to-implement ideas cannot be denied at this stage, but the ministry’s ultimate success should be to introduce the culture of research in science. Once the battery-powered ride is over, the minister should start working on making classrooms science learning friendly. *