Hybrid and electric car sales increasing in SA
CATASTROPHIC power grid woes aside, South Africa has been decidedly slow to transition to electric cars, which remain prohibitively expensive, but the country is certainly warming to hybrids.
South Africa’s Automotive Business Council, Naamsa, has released comparative sales data for hybrid and electric vehicles and it shows steady growth.
A total of 502 fully electric vehicles were sold in South Africa last year, which is a 134% increase over the 218 units sold in 2021 and a 782% increase over the 58 cars that found homes five years earlier in 2018. It seems even fewer South Africans are warming to plug-in hybrids (PHEV), which are often seen as the ideal bridge between ICE and EV for markets such as ours. Just 122 South Africans bought a PHEV last year, and this is an increase of just 37% over 2018.
But traditional self-charging hybrids are exploding in popularity, with 4 050 finding homes last year, representing a year-on-year gain of 546% and a 7 200% increase over 2018.
Sales figures for the individual hybrid models have not been released, but there’s no doubt that the Toyota
Corolla Cross HEV accounts for the vast majority of hybrid sales here.
The Corolla SUV model is the country’s most affordable hybrid, starting at R442 800, followed by its Corolla hatch sibling at R500 700, the Honda Fit Hybrid (R509 600) and the Haval Jolion HEV (R549 950).
While Mzansi is warming to hybrids, sales of fully electric cars are still a drop in the ocean, last year representing 0.1% of the year’s total sales tally of 528 963 vehicles. It’s not known which are the country’s best-selling EVs as individual sales data for most models has not been reported. Suffice to say that there are no volume models and electric cars remain prohibitively expensive in South Africa, with the limited-range Mini Cooper SE kicking things off at R742 102. If you want a family-sized EV you’ll have to stretch to R1 075 000 for Volvo’s XC40 P6 Recharge.
Also starting in the early millions are the Mercedes EQA (from R1 174 000), Volvo C40 P8 (R1 295 000), BMW iX3 (R1 306 400) and Mercedes EQB (R1 432 000).
Prohibitive pricing remains the biggest obstacle to the adoption of New Energy Vehicles in the country, according to a thought leadership discussion document, “South Africa’s New Energy
Vehicle Roadmap”, released by Naamsa this week.
According to the industry body, fully-electric vehicles are on average 52% more expensive than their equivalent internal combustion models.
This gap is reduced to 43% for PHEVs and just 12% for traditional hybrid models.