The National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa (Naamsa) is set to award a tender to the tune of “hundreds of millions of rands” for the roll-out of new-energy vehicle (NEV) charging infrastructure in the country, with no assistance from government.
The association is working on behalf of several locally-based Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and vehicle importers and distributors who are financing the initiative together, Moneyweb reports. A portion of the funding will also come from the Automotive Industry Transformation Fund.
Naamsa CEO Mikel Mabasa said the tender submission deadline closed in March with the expected date for announcing the winners being the end of June.
Naamsa received bids from four local and five international applicants and is still looking at the “quality, capability, and experience of those who responded,” he said.
Due to the scale of the project, Mabasa noted that it would be preferable to have multiple contractors taking on the job to avoid any issues that may arise due to incapacities with a single operator.
The companies will be responsible for installing NEV infrastructure across large parts of the national road network including on the N1 from Musina to Cape Town, the N2 from Cape Town to Richards Bay and in KwaZulu-Natal, the N3, and the N4.
“We want the deployment of fast-charging infrastructure on these routes because we have seen an increase of electric vehicles coming into the country and many of the OEMs are making their investments for their own charging infrastructure,” Mabasa said.
Just recently, Audi erected an additional 43 chargers in the country, including the most powerful one available to the public, to bring its total number of plugs to 127. Other OEMs such as Jaguar, Porsche, and Volvo also offer charge points at select locations, and independent companies like Aeversa, GridCars, and Rubicon are taking part in the market segment, too.
Even with all these players and over 350 charging locations across the country, there is still a noticeable lack of accessible stations in the majority of the nation. It’s also highly expensive and risky for one business to expand the network alone with no guarantee that it will get a return on its investment.
“So, we have taken a decision that instead of each and every company investing in their own infrastructure, let’s put all our resources into one basket and make sure that we set up charging stations that are available to everyone,” said Mabasa.
The infrastructure rollout will take place in a phased approach and it has not yet been determined how many chargers are going to be put up, said Mabasa. The first phase is focusing on areas where the most NEVs are purchased, and the rest of the deployment will be driven by demand.
Naamsa is also working with Independent Power Producers (IPPs) to avoid the additional stations being overly reliant on Eskom and therefore subject to load-shedding.
GridCars Charging Map
The perfect time
Naamsa has before lambasted the government for dragging its feet on employing NEV purchase and manufacturing incentives in South Africa, and the association’s infrastructure initiative could not have come at a better time.
In the first quarter of 2023, a total of 1,665 NEVs were purchased in South Africa comprising 25 plug-in hybrids (PHEV), 232 electric vehicles (EV), and 1,408 traditional hybrids (HEV), which is a marked increase of 18.8% over Q1 2022.
However, the number of NEVs sold in Q1 2023 is a remarkable 86% more than for the entire 2021, and an even more staggering 309% above 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic took its toll on sales figures.
While most local motorists are still stuck on the idea of owning a petrol or diesel car, these numbers nevertheless indicate a rising trend in NEV interest.
The below table, provided by Naamsa, details the NEV sales figures in South Africa over the past five years:
In addition to adoption ratings being on the up, the number of battery-powered models on the market is increasing with the country seeing an influx of EVs in 2022 from the likes of Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Volvo bringing the total number of battery-electric cars on sale to just under 40.
However, all of these were on the premium end of the price spectrum and fetched well over a million rand, a gap that Chinese automakers have noticed and are now attempting to fill.
Considering the ever-growing popularity of manufacturers from the East, GWM has announced that it will introduce its Ora electric hatchback to the South African market, and BYD, China’s largest EV producer, confirmed that it’s bringing over its Atto 3 electric crossover.
The Ora will sell from a base price of R716,900, undercutting the previous most-affordable EV in South Africa the Mini Cooper SE by R25,202.
The Atto’s window sticker has yet to be announced, though in other markets such as Australia it can be had from around AU$48,100 (R607,000), so it’s expected that it, too, will come in cheaper than the Mini.
Toyota, the country’s favourite carmaker, has also committed to shifting its focus to PHEVs and, to a lesser extent, EVs for the domestic market from 2024 onwards.
Taking into account the steady expansion of NEV options in South Africa and the expectation that prices for these cars will drop in the near future due to rapidly-decreasing battery development costs, adoption rates are anticipated to start rising exponentially and OEMs and other industry participants will need a reliable NEV framework to support the demand.
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