Egypt accelerates transport transition with large-scale vehicle conversions
In Egypt, more than 100,000 internal combustion vehicles are to be converted to electric drives. As a local media news site has reported, the country’s Supreme Council for Vehicle Construction has approved initiatives by two national electric mobility companies.
According to the report, the start-up Shift EV and the e-mobility platform BluEV have been given the green light for their respective conversion projects. Both are based in Cairo.
According to the Egyptian news site Ahram Online, Shift EV will convert 100,000 combustion vehicles to electric drives in the next five years, including 80,000 pickups and 20,000 minivans.
The BluEV initiative, on the other hand, envisages the conversion of two- and three-wheelers, for which BluEV wants to offer battery leasing and a network of battery swap stations. Customers create an account on BluEV after purchasing an electric vehicle or converting their old vehicles, to gain access to the smart batteries network. Payments and transactions can be made from their e-wallets.
The government of Egypt has responded to the emerging 2022 transport transition off fossil fuels by launching a national strategy to develop the country’s automotive industry – including the production of electric vehicles.
In 2020, the Egyptian government reached agreements with Foton and Geely respectively for electric buses and cars to be produced in Egypt. Later the same year, the country’s oldest automotive manufacturing company El Nasr signed a deal with China’s Dongfeng Motor to produce electric cars for the first time in Egypt.
As the above-mentioned news site writes, the country’s Senate also approved a bill in October 2022 to establish a Supreme Council for Automotive Manufacturing and create a fund to finance an environmentally friendly electric vehicle industry in Egypt. This council has now also set the course for the two conversion projects.
It is unclear from the media report how and when exactly the conversion projects from ShiftEV and BluEV will take off.
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