Västtrafik's Spectacular Car Towers Bring Climate Statistics to Life

Every day in the news, we see new statistics and bar graphs of the climate crisis. Perhaps, we have become too used to them? This vehicle bar graph shows the climate benefit of public transport.

“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” said Lars Backman, CEO of Västtrafik.

In the film, a bar graph emerges – created by electric cars, fossil cars, and an electric bus. At the end of the film, we see that the vehicles form a graph showing the difference in carbon dioxide emissions. The campaign is developed by Forsman & Bodenfors for Västtrafik, Swedish public transportation company.

With numbers from IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute, Västtrafik has produced figures that show how emissions of carbon dioxide differ between different vehicle types. The diagram reports the total carbon dioxide emissions per kilometre for the transport of 50 people. The electric bus emits 11 times less than if the same number travels with an electric car and 36 times less than if they travel with a fossil car. The statistics are based on the vehicle's entire life cycle, including manufacturing and operation, and each car holds 1.4 people, which is average in Sweden.

“Västtrafik has made a huge investment in electrification in recent years, and we wanted to draw attention to the climate benefits of that. Statistics are an effective way to make the complex understandable, but unfortunately, statistics are often quite boring. We wanted to show the advantages of public transport in as clear and exciting a way as possible” said Pontus Caresten Lychou, copywriter at Forsman & Bodenfors.

The campaign is showcased in print, online film, Västtrafik stores, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and TikTok.

Read more about the statistics here.