Electric vehicles in South Africa: how to avoid making them the privilege of the few

Electric Cars being recharged in Paris. South Africa needs to subsidise entry level vehicles to boost sales. Photo by: Dukas/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

In the early 1900s, automobiles took the streets of industrialised cities by storm, rapidly displacing horse-drawn vehicles. Fiercely contested at first, the internal combustion engine won the technological battle against electric vehicles which accounted for up to a third of vehicles on the road before declining.

After more than a century of domination, the internal combustion engine age is soon to be over. The tide is turning to electric vehicles. Pushed by environmental regulations, support programmes and improving economics, electric vehicles are set to become dominant in the coming decades. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been reminding us, we have to aggressively shift to electric vehicles - as part of a broader drive to sustainable mobility - to meet our climate goals.