Australia is one of South Africa’s major export countries for right-hand drive vehicles, and Australia has a few EV models already in their market. The uptake has already started, whilst we now see across Europe that France, Italy, Germany, etc are already measuring new vehicle sales of more than 10% month on month going to electric cars.
Back in South Africa, no single electric vehicle has yet been manufactured for local or export use. The only imports of EVs are pretty expensive BMW, Audi’s, Porches, etc that no-one but the rich can afford.
Yes, it is in part due to South Africa placing a higher import tax on EVs versus for combustion engines (is any other government in the world doing this?), but South Africa had been counting on an active manufacturing capability in the past to produce vehicles for the export market. It seems though too that assembling EVs is a lot simpler than for combustion engines, so even elsewhere in Africa this is starting to happen for EVs.
One just hopes that by the time South Africa has “geared” itself up for EV assembly or manufacture, that the wave has not passed us by. The tipping point for EV take up appears now to be as soon as 2023 or 2024 (MarketWatch, although Mahindra in India still projects from 2025 for Indian market), whereas before it had been projected from 2025. Seems to be sooner than later! The tipping point is considered to be 5% of new car sales, and to date 19 countries have already passed this point (InsiderIntelligence as at 13 Jul 2022).
See https://cleantechnica.com/2022/08/07/byd-electric-vehicle-launch-a-massive-success-in-australia/
#environment #EV #BYD #Australia #SouthAfrica