South Africa was on the verge of becoming one of the first countries to mass-produce passenger electric cars , but thanks to excessively high sales objectives and another botched government-funded research endeavour, Tesla beat us to the punch. Joule, a four-door multi-purpose vehicle developed by Optimal Energy showed great promise in making South Africa the world leader in the production of EVs.
Joule’s marketing and sales model was also different from other carmakers with the idea being to sell the cars from stores in malls and have them delivered to people’s homes. Louw explained the initial plan was to make about 10-20 cars a year and have the government buy them to be driven by officials. However, the success of the Paris Motor Show in 2008 convinced the company to ramp up its production to 50,000 models per year.