South Africa will become a new vehicle importing country and will no longer be a new vehicle production hub in the longer term, a doyen of the country’s motor industry has predicted.
“More and more cars will be imported because they are cheaper to manufacture because they have scale. We don’t have the scale in South Africa,” he said. In addition, multinational automotive group Stellantis confirmed last year its intention to invest R3 billion in South Africa to establish a state-of-the-art greenfields automotive plant, also in Coega in the Eastern Cape.
“The work of the AAAM has been instrumental in putting together an African view of the industry rather than just a South African view. “You are really dreaming if you think that is going to happen tomorrow,” he said, adding that if the production of ICE vehicles stopped tomorrow, it would take 14 years for EV sales to dominate the domestic market because of various other challenges.