Just two years after Elon Musk began producing electric cars, a South African team had beautifully designed prototypes on the floor and was ready to go. It didn’t materialise. The sad story of thwarted innovation has been told, but what happened to the cars? The internal combustion engine is a dinosaur future generations will probably view with horror. It got us around but damn near wrecked the planet with its emissions.
That much was clear to two university friends who had done innovative things with their mechanical engineering degrees after graduation. Kobus Meiring had been programme manager in the creation of the formidable Rooivalk helicopter gunship, then moved on to manage the SA Large Telescope (SALT) being built in the Karoo. He asked his former Stellenbosch housemate Jian Swiegers to join him. When the programme moved to its next phase – the Square Kilometre Array Observatory – they decided they needed a change. As Swiegers put it, “You only build one telescope. It’s a very aggressive race against time and exhausting.”In the can-do attitude with which South Africans are often credited, Meiring suggested they build an electric car. The pair formed Optimal Energy in 2005 with another SALT engineer, Gerhard Swart, and former helicopter test pilot Mike Lombard. The Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) provided around R300-million and the Department of Science and Technology’s Innovation Fund added R15-million to build a prototype.In the planning stag