As the persistent load shedding continues to wreak havoc in many sectors of the economy, the car manufacturing industry is feeling the effects.
This comes as South Africa’s automotive vehicle, manufacturers, and production for the year might slide because of it, Naamsa CEO Mike Mabasa said.
Mabasa said the issue was the heavy-duty equipment and large-scale robotic assembly and production equipment at the manufacturers.
With Eskom having introduced Stage 6 of load shedding this week, the heavy-duty equipment cannot be powered by generators or alternative energy sources as they require a great deal of continuous current.
Resulting in this situation surrounding Eskom, the automobile manufacturers all had power generation equipment, but this was largely limited to supplying lighting and small equipment.
“With the prolonged power cuts, it means that instead of producing 100 cars a day, a manufacturer now can only produce 87 or 85 vehicles,” said Mabasa per IOL.
An additional problem was that once the production process stopped, it took a long time for the factory to be able to resume production again. Also, for instance, it was impossible to cut power in the vehicle paint shop midway through the painting process.”
Looking into the future, Mabasa said progress was ongoing on the country’s move towards producing and selling electric vehicles (EVs), some 64% of South Africa’s vehicle production.
He added that for example, the banks had become members of Naamsa, and for instance, were aiming to finance electric vehicles for consumers, along with the necessary solar panels or alternative energy equipment required to recharge the vehicle.
“Absa for instance, no longer call their vehicle financing division Absa Vehicle Finance, it is now called Absa Asset Finance,” Mabasa continued.
“We don’t see a situation in the long term where we can sell electric vehicles that are powered by dirty power from Eskom,” he said, adding that Naamsa also intended to liaise with independent power producers to source power needs over the longer term.
Mabasa said what was still lacking was clear policy from the government on the introduction of electric vehicles – most export markets already had clear policy guidelines in place – and he said they anticipated some pronouncements from the government on this “sooner rather than later”.
Known as the biggest employer and in the manufacturing sector, the car manufacturing sector exports cars to many countries contributes a lot to the economy as it employs about 457 000 workers in the South African formal sector.
