New energy vehicles (NEVs) are the fastest-growing vehicle segment in South Africa, having more than doubled their sales in a single year.
The Automotive Business Council (Naamsa) recently published its new sales data for 2024, showing that NEV purchases went up over 100% year-on-year from 2023.
An emerging market
NEVs is an industry term used to describe cars with powertrains that have varying forms of electrical assistance, comprising hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs), and battery-electric vehicles (BEVs).
HEVs (or “traditional hybrids”) feature a small electrical motor that assists the internal combustion engine at low speeds, effectively helping to cut down on fuel consumption, while PHEVs have a more powerful e-motor and battery that can drive the car in place of the engine for short to medium distances.
BEVs, meanwhile, refer to fully-electric cars that have no engine component and are entirely driven by an e-motor and a significantly larger battery than what you’d find on a PHEV.
There’s also a fourth category of vehicles known as mild hybrids, which typically employ a more powerful starter motor to improve engine efficiency, but these models are not included under the NEV umbrella as the benefits of the system are very minor.
With all that in mind, South Africans purchased a grand total of 15,611 NEVs in 2024 across 21 different brands.
This is a new record for NEV sales, marking an improvement of over 100% from the 7,746 units sold in 2023.
NEV sales have increased exponentially since the start of the decade, as only 324 units were bought in 2020, which increased to 896 units in 2021, and 4,694 in 2023, as per cars.co.za’s research.
The rapid escalation in purchases can largely be attributed to the fact that several new models have made it onto the market in recent years, many of which have slashed the starting price of their respective vehicle types by hundreds of thousands of rands.
This is especially the case with BEVs, as it wasn’t that long ago that consumers only options were nameplates like the Jaguar I-Pace or Porsche Taycan, which cost over R2 million.
Since 2023, South Africa has received newcomers like the BYD Dolphin, GWM Ora, and Volvo EX30, which have brought the price of electric cars under the critical R1-million barrier.
Last year even saw the introduction of the country’s first sub-R500,000 BEV with the Dayun Yuehu S5, and another affordable model is set to appear this year with the BYD Dolphin Mini.
The end result is that BEV sales reached a new high of 1,257 units in 2024, representing 8% of all new-energy cars in South Africa.
Of course, the vast majority of NEV sales are for the comparatively mass-market traditional hybrids, where badges like the R494,400 Toyota Corolla Cross and R516,950 Haval Jolion are leading the pack.
HEVs accounted for 13,604 of the 15,611 models sold in 2024 – representing a staggering 87% market share.
PHEVs, meanwhile, remain the most exclusive of the trio, as there are still no plug-in models retailing for less than R1-million in South Africa.
The BMW X1 30e currently represents the entry point at R1,050,000 and Toyota may potentially have a slightly cheaper option with the R980,000 RAV4 in the works, but the fact remains that PHEVs are currently the most expensive of the three electrified vehicle types.
Consequently, only 728 PHEVs were sold in 2024, equivalent to 4.6% of the new-energy market.
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