SOUTH AFRICANS marked Heritage Day recently, whilst also an opportunity to reflect on the country's electric vehicle history, and what it will take to write the next chapter.

The James Hall Museum of Transport in Johannesburg is the largest and most comprehensive land transport museum in Africa, tracing SA's transport journey from animal-drawn vehicles in 1870, through trams and trolley buses from 1896, to motor cars from 1900. It also houses much of the country's electric vehicle history.

The collection includes the 1974 Enfield 8000, the first electrically self-powered car in South Africa. Haggie Rand brought the vehicle into the country in 1974 to promote and expand a chloride battery project. In 1992, a Mr B Pollock championed its environmental benefits, and in 1994 Eskom launched its electric vehicle project with this car before later donating it to the museum.

It stands beside the Joule, a five-seater electric vehicle developed by Optimal Energy. The Cape Town-based company was founded in 2005, and closed in June 2012, but the Joule remains a reminder that South African engineers were designing electric vehicles well before the global market took off.

The commercial era for electric vehicles began in November 2013, when the Nissan Leaf became the first battery electric vehicle sold in South Africa. That has grown to a marketplace offering buyers more than 50 different passenger battery electric vehicle models today.

“Heritage is not simply where we have been, it is also what we choose to build next. South Africa has been part of the electric vehicle story for fifty years,” says Hiten Parmar, Executive Director of The Electric Mission. “Now we have the chance to make these vehicles here, for our own roads, and for the world.”

South Africa has a 102-year history of automotive manufacturing but no zero-emission vehicles, whether battery electric or hydrogen, are assembled or manufactured locally. The United Kingdom and European Union, South Africa's primary vehicle export markets, are moving to zero-emission mandates for 2030 and 2035. South Africa’s long standing policy frameworks to date have secured global investments for combustion engine technologies, traditional hybrids, and plug-in hybrid vehicle manufacturing in South Africa. Recently, the incentive framework has presented the first signal to global manufacturers, and since March 2026, Section 12V of the Income Tax Act has given qualifying vehicle manufacturers a 150 percent tax deduction on capital investments in producing electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles, creating a incentive pathway to bring zero-emission vehicle production to South African soil.

“Globally, the sale of internal combustion engine vehicles has already peaked in 2017, and today, more evidently, consumers are using their purchasing power under volatile fuel prices with the transition to electric vehicles,” says Parmar. For local market readiness, according to the International Energy Agency’s report, South Africa ranks within the top 25 globally for the average number of electric vehicles per public charging point. Overall, the total cost of ownership for electric vehicles, which factors in purchase cost, operational and maintenance costs, presents clear economics for consumers and businesses to switch to electric vehicles.

Alongside our automotive heritage, South Africans are encouraged to visit the James Hall Museum of Transport to see where the country's electric journey began, as South Africa’s roads increasingly converge with electric vehicles.