Electric vehicles are here to stay

Yesterday, in case you missed it, was International Electric Vehicle (EV) Day.

If that fact did escape you, it’s no surprise because South Africa is lagging behind some African countries when it comes to take-up of “green” vehicles.

One such “early adopter” is Ethiopia where, as we report today, more than 100 000 people have bought NEVs (new energy vehicles).

The streets of the capital Addis Ababa are increasingly home to EVs, mainly imported from China, which is the global leader in the technology, no matter what Elon Musk and Tesla try to tell you.

South Africa, by contrast, has probably a third of that number of NEVs on our roads.

However, where the Ethiopians are going to pure EVs, South African buyers appear to be hedging their bets on the future of mobility, because 84% of NEV sales are of hybrid cars, where a battery-electric system is combined with a convention internal combustion engine.

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Hybrids are seen by many as the answer to the perennial headache about EVs – “range anxiety”.

This is the fear of getting stranded on a dead battery without a place to recharge it.

Like many countries, including Ethiopia, South Africa’s EV charging infrastructure is primitive and patchy, although it is expanding by the month.

Hybrids – even the ones that plug into an electrical mains to charge the battery, as opposed to having the conventional engine do it – obviate the need for EV charging points, making the traditional South African long-range road trip possible because the car can be fuelled at ordinary petrol stations.

Critics of NEVs claim, correctly, that they don’t save the planet from being smothered by CO2 because the materials and manufacturing process consume huge amounts of hydrocarbons.

Despite the predictions of the denialists, however, NEVs will be a part of our future.

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