Episode 8 of Watts & Wheels – TechCentral’s electric motoring show – opens with William Kelly on his soapbox, clipboard in hand, and a simple demand: keep left, pass right.
Too many South African drivers, he argues, treat the left indicator as an invitation to be overtaken rather than a signal of intent, and lane discipline would save the country time, fuel and a great deal of frustration, he opines.
Duncan McLeod wonders where enforcement of that sort ends – cameras and artificial intelligence deciding when you should pull over? – which leads neatly into the episode’s main interview.
Watch episode 8
In episode 8, William and Duncan get stuck into:
- An interview with Dillan Fernando, CEO of Tracker, on what a vehicle-tracking business becomes when cars generate far more data than a stolen-vehicle recovery unit ever needed – and what happens once AI is pointed at it.
- The grid maths – William sets a total Eskom grid figure of roughly 47GW against a national fleet of about 13 million vehicles, of which only some 10 000 can be plugged in at all. His conclusion: EV charging is nowhere near being an Eskom problem, and on current trajectories most of us will not live to see the day it is.
- EV education in South Africa – how much do buyers actually understand about what they are being sold, and whose job is it to tell them?
- Volvo gets Gemini – Google’s assistant has begun rolling out to Volvo cars, starting in the US and reaching models going back to 2020. Fixed voice commands give way to something closer to conversation: brainstorming a holiday, finding a decent coffee stop on the route, summarising an incoming text and dictating a reply in another language, or simply asking for something calming on the stereo.
- Tesla lands in Africa – in Casablanca – Morocco, not South Africa, is where Tesla has put its African base, with a corporate presence in Casablanca and a Supercharger network built out since 2021 across Casablanca, Tangier, Rabat, Fez, Marrakesh and Agadir. Its cars still cannot be bought through official channels here. Is Africa a sleeping EV giant? The hosts are unconvinced.
- Trade deals and battery minerals – India signs a motor industry trade deal with the EU while, at home, Itac proposes bringing EV battery minerals into the list of qualifying standard materials under APDP2, at a standard value added rate of 50% against the usual 25%, provided they originate in Sacu or the SADC region. William’s question: is anyone actually going to build the batteries?
- Mad Chinese cars – BYD’s Tang and the Denza B8, plus XPeng’s GX, the brand’s first three-row luxury SUV.
- A moment of silence – too soon, Honda? The hosts mark the company’s retreat from its electric vehicle strategy.
Also in the mix is the new metal heading for South African showrooms. The Jaecoo J5 and the iCaur are on the way, along with the BYD Atto 2 DM-i, a plug-in hybrid whose entry-level version carries a 7.8kWh Blade battery – a remarkably small pack for a car you are expected to plug in. It arrives loaded with equipment, which prompts a broader observation: Chinese brands have spoiled South African buyers so quickly that the goalposts have already moved.
Prefer audio? No problem
To contrast all that smoothness with something built for a purpose, there is the new Thula – the locally engineered electric game viewer that featured in episode 5 – back for another look.
The episode closes with Hot or Not, where the Toyota FJ, the BYD Atto 2 DM-i, the iCaur and the Thula game viewer all go under the hammer.
Watch S1E8 of Watts & Wheels now. Don’t forget to subscribe, and please share the show with your friends and colleagues.
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