This Week In The News

NEWS IN SHORT

• Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana has announced that there will be no changes to the country’s General Fuel Levy (GFL) and Road Accident Fund (RAF) Levy for 2024. The Carbon Fuel Levy, meanwhile, which is included as an add-on to the GFL, will increase from 10c/liter to 11c/liter for petrol, and from 11c/liter to 14c/liter for diesel. (No comment)
  
  
• The new Honda Elevate officially goes on sale in South Africa today, 23 February 2024, taking its place as the new point of entry to the brand’s family of SUVs. Prices for the SUV start at R369,900, making it R49,100 more expensive than the model it’s replacing, the WR-V.
  
  
• The Organization Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) believes that government will not refund e-toll users who have been diligently paying their accounts for the past decade because there are simply no funds available to do so.
  
  
• Chery is working on a double-cab bakkie that could rival the likes of the Ford Ranger and Toyota Hilux. The Chinese automaker is currently working on a mid-size double cab that will allegedly take on the industry’s heavy hitters like the Ford Ranger and Toyota Hilux – which happen to be two of the best-selling vehicles in the country.

• New number plates for South Africa – Not just Gauteng

 

E-tolls are officially dead – New date set for shutdown

Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi has officially announced that the process of delinking the province’s e-toll gantries will start by the end of March.

The initially proposed date would see the gantries being scrapped by December 2022, but this deadline came and went, and the system continues to be operational as of February 2024 with motorists still being charged on a daily basis (Gooi sout.....We heard this before )

 

Budget: New EV policy incentives – too little, too late?

Government has introduced long-awaited incentives to aid in attracting investment for the local production of electric vehicles. The scheme allows producers of electric and hydrogen vehicles to claim up to 150% of “qualifying investment spending” in the first year.

Government has set aside R964-million to support the transition to electric vehicles as a supplement to the incentive scheme, but details of how this allocation will be spent are yet to be disclosed.

Delays in the finalization of the national EV policy have long frustrated industry players, which could not make long-term investment decisions without any certainty about government’s policy direction.

Government’s new incentive is only effective from 1 March 2026 and there are worries that this gap in implementation could give competing markets enough time to steal South Africa’s lunch.

“South Africa has procrastinated far too long. We can no longer afford to be silent on policy choices the country should make about the future of this important sector in the economic life of South Africa and her people,” Mikel Mabasa, CEO of the Automotive Business Council (also known as Naamsa)

“Delays in the definition of a clear policy direction threaten the local industry’s longevity. Meanwhile, other African nations, including Egypt and Ethiopia, have taken an early lead in Africa in the development of their EV industries and present a growing threat to South Africa’s export industry. “Last year alone, the automotive export value amounted to R227.3-billion”

 

Wireless charging for EVs is inching closer to reality

Someday soon, plug-in cars may no longer need a plug. Electric car drivers would simply pull into a specialized parking space when it’s time to power up, wait for a light on their dashboard to switch on, and then hop out of the car and go about their day.

Wireless, or inductive, EV charging works by using magnetic resonance and a charging pad to generate a power-transmitting field. When a coil in a receiver under the car aligns with a coil in the charging pad, the receiver captures that energy and feeds it to the car’s battery. The technology is similar to wireless phone charging, which also requires a receiver and aligned coils; but EV systems can work with up to 250mm of separation.

 

Dark clouds gather for one of South Africa’s biggest employers

High interest rates, the cost of living crisis, port congestion, and container backlogs have depressed the automotive industry in South Africa, and CEOs in the sector don’t expect things to get any better for at least the next six months.

The automotive industry is the largest player in South Africa’s manufacturing industry. In 2021, it contributed close to 5% of the country’s annual gross domestic product.

Depending on data sources, it directly employs nearly 500,000 people formally and informally, which is 2.9% of total employment. The auto industry also exports products to 152 markets, generating R227.3 billion in export revenue last year.

However, the tide is starting to turn for the industry, with some job losses experienced in the last quarter and more expected to come as business conditions remain down.

According to Naamsa’s Quarterly review of business conditions, aggregate new vehicle sales during the fourth quarter of 2023 recorded a decline of 5.4% compared to the corresponding quarter of 2022 and 3.5% compared to the third quarter of 2023.

As of January 2024, new vehicle sales continued the five consecutive months of decline up to the end of 2023 in the new vehicle market.

As a result, according to Naamsa’s CEO Confidence Index, CEOs generally reflect a negative, cautious and uncertain outlook for all of the industry’s key performance indicators over the next six months.

The CEOs noted that the financial strain on consumers due to high interest rates and a sluggish economy negatively impacted new vehicle demand.

However, the upward momentum in vehicle exports supported vehicle production in the case of some light vehicle OEMs.

 

DID YOU KNOW

• The average price of an automobile in the US is about $48,000 (R906,000), while EVs average closer to $60,000 (R1.1 million), according to automotive researcher Edmunds.com.
  
  
• PEUGEOT is one of the first car manufacturers to integrate ChatGPT* artificial intelligence as a service to its customers. All PEUGEOT customers with eligible models can activate ChatGPT via the PEUGEOT Service Store. The introduction of generative artificial intelligence in PEUGEOT vehicles is the subject of a pilot phase that allows the system to be activated and used for free for a period of 6 months*
  
  
• One of the world’s biggest criminal hacking gangs, Lockbit, woke up on Tuesday to a startling discovery: law enforcement, during the night, took over their main website on Monday. Experts said, Lockbit netted over $120-million in ransom payments. The group, Lockbit, had become notorious in cybercrime circles for using malicious software called ransomware to digitally extort victims.
  
  

Feedback: Western Cape

We managed to secure a meeting with the powers to be within the City of Cape Town to urgently address the hardship caused by the changes in license and registration policies re outstanding warrants.
All parties were fully briefed on the impact of said changes and we look forward to a fruitful meeting whereby we can revert back to the previous status quo.

The meeting is set for 28 February 2024 at 13h00.