The Chinese auto sector leads the world in terms of volumes when it comes to EV adoption. Last year, 22% of new car sales in China were 100% electric. About 6 million EVs (battery-electric + plug-in hybrids) were sold in China last year. Topping the list was BYD Song and … [continued]
A number of countries in Africa depend on fossil fuel imports to meet their energy requirements in the transport sector. These fossil fuel imports constitute a good chunk of the total import bill, draining the countries of the much needed and scarce foreign currency. We have looked at a few … [continued]
I was born in Mutare, a beautiful small border town in the eastern highlands of Zimbabwe. Mutare is home to one of Zimbabwe’s motor vehicle assembly plants, Quest Motor Corporation. Quest Motors is also the official dealer for BMW in Zimbabwe. I used to like BMW a lot when I … [continued]
The Hyundai Kona EV is now also on sale in Ghana! In both Nigeria and Ghana, Hyundai is only offering the longer range 64 kWh version, with a real world range of over 400 kilometers, which is great in this part of the world where public charging infrastructure is not yet as developed as in other places.
Africa presents an exciting opportunity in the electromobility space. Africa’s low motorization levels present an opportunity for another leapfrog event, like seen previously in the telecommunications industry.
The first batch of Solar Taxi’s 10 Cherry Tiggo 3xe 480 EV SUVs have arrived in Ghana, and customers who had pre-ordered, as well as those who have signed expressions of interest, are now enjoying the first round of test drives before deliveries start in September.
A potential bottleneck could come quite soon on the used EV supply side. Thanks to Japanese OEM’s love of mild hybrids and their quest to prolong the ICE age as long as possible, sales of EVs in Japan have been very disappointing. Sales have been so poor that the market share of EVs in Japan was recently just under 1%.
Even counting used vehicles, the majority of African countries still have very low levels of motorization compared to countries in the developed world. Only a handful of countries have motorization rates above 100 vehicles per 1,000 people.
We continue with our push to show that driving electric in Africa can be a whole lot cheaper than driving ICE. How cheap? In some cases, driving electric is as good as driving for free thanks some really cheap residential electricity tariffs in several countries.
Marathon Motor Engineering, a joint venture between Hyundai Motor Company and Olympic Champion Haile Gebrselassie, has started assembling the all-electric Hyundai Ioniq in Ethiopia.
