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TCS | The Volvo EX30 electric car, reviewed by an owner

The Volvo EX30 is undoubtedly one of the most exciting electric cars to be launched in South Africa in 2024. The vehicle, whose price starts at R792 000, offers a combination of price, performance and luxury tweaks that has attracted considerable appeal among South African consumers interested in making the switch to electric mobility. But what is the Volvo EX30 like to drive? TechCentral recently had the opportunity to spend time with the twin-motor version of the EX30 to put it through its paces. Apart from a few minor niggles, including the quality of materials used in the dashboard, we can confidently say this is a very compelling option for those interested in buying an EV in the sub-R1-million price category. While it’s not as affordable as more entry-level EV models from the likes of China’s BYD, the vehicle offers many luxuries usually reserved for more expensive EVs, including a panoramic (non-opening) sunroof, high-end Harman Kardon audio and well-thought-out software features. It’s easy to see where Volvo has compromised to get the price down, but the decisions it has made in this regard have mostly been carefully considered. As for the driving experience, the power underfoot is extraordinary. The twin motor version TechCentral tested accelerated from 0-100km/h more quickly than a Porsche 911 – it really is a thrill to drive! This is a sentiment shared by Greg Cress, who owns the EX30 and has been driving it since March, when he took delivery from Volvo. Cress joined TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod on the TechCentral Show (TCS) recently to review the vehicle and to talk about the state of the EV market more broadly in South Africa. Cress, who works for Accenture – where he is principal director of automotive and e-mobility – told TCS about his experiences with the vehicle and what he likes about it and what he doesn’t. He unpacks his experiences so far, including with the regular software updates that Volvo has issued and why he settled on the EX30 over other EV options available in the South African market. He also shares details about a recent long-distance return trip he did from Pretoria to White River in Mpumalanga and how he found utilising the charging points along South Africa’s national roads. Then, in the second part of the TCS interview, Cress shares his views on the state of the EV market in South Africa, what is hindering its wider adoption and the outlook for electric mobility in the country. Don’t miss a hugely informative interview.

Duration:: 57m
Broadcast on:: 24 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: aac

I'm Duncan McLeod, and this is the Tech Central Show. You know the drill by now. Subscribe to us on YouTube at youtube.com/techcentral or find us in your favorite podcasting app. You can simply search Tech Central one word and hit the subscribe button on the show you want to subscribe to. Now, something a little unusual on TCS. We're going to be chatting to the owner and driver of arguably the most anticipated electric car of 2024 and that's the Volvo EX30. Greg Kress works for Accenture where he is Principal Director, Automotive and Mobility so he knows quite a bit on the subject of EVs. Greg, welcome. Good to see you. Thanks for making the time to come into our studio. Thanks so much, Duncan. Pleasure to be here. When did you buy your Volvo EX30? Well, when I saw the announcement of the vehicle run by June last year, I thought this is going to be a game changer. So I got my order in a run by August last year, and then it was about waiting and seeing and thinking, "Geez, have I really put my order into this? Am I going to get this car?" And it all happened over that period of time until the first delivery started coming out around February, March this year. So that was when I took it a long wait from August last year to February this year to wait for your vehicle. It is, and it's not usually a characteristic purchase that I would make normally, but seeing such a game changer of a vehicle in terms of the technology, the price point as well, that Volvo was bringing it out in South Africa. Compared to what was really available on the market, I think really was what made me make that purchase decision to start with. And one of the interesting things is they actually attracted us and put us onto a Volvo EX30 official users or customers group on Facebook, right up until the delivery, and it's still going. But it was about just maintaining and showing you all the previews of the car before you actually took it. Keep the excitement levels up. Keep the excitement levels up. Interesting. Okay. So we're going to do this podcast today in two parts. We're going to do the first part where we're actually going to review the Volvo EX30. I've had the experience over the last little while of driving a review vehicle as well. And so I'm going to share some of my views. Greg, you're going to share your views owning the vehicle for a lot longer than I've had the privilege to drive it. So your insights are probably going to be a lot more detailed than mine. But let's have a chat about the car. And then in the second half of the discussion with your Accenture hat on, where you are a principal director for automotive and e-mobility, we're going to have a chat about the South African EV market, where we are, what needs to be done, what's holding the market back. Excellent. What the potential is. Let's dive right in with a discussion on the Volvo EX30. So my thoughts on the vehicle just very briefly, I think the first thing I noticed about it was its incredible performance of the starting line. We reviewed the twin motor version, which accelerated from 0 to 100 and approximately 3.6 seconds, which I think, if I'm not mistaken, means it accelerates faster than a Porsche Boxster, which is rather astonishing for a vehicle in this class, which starts in the range of around, I think it's around 775,000 for its basic configuration and goes up from there. But my general view of the vehicle was that Volvo has done a good, very good job of taking the best of its more expensive EVs, shoe-hooning them into a cheaper package, making cuts here and there to bring the cost down, but for the most part, making the right decisions and producing was actually a very good product. Absolutely. And that's my sentiment as well. I mean, one of the first things you notice when you step into the car is just how minimalist the interface is and the interior is very minimalist. Yes. It's a Swedish kind of design language, if you will, but they've taken it to the really to the extreme, to the point that you don't have a dashboard in front of you. All that you've got is a driver infrared sensor for driver fatigue. Everything they've done now is basically centralized on a central arpegg shaped interface screen. Yes. Especially from your speed and all your car controls at the top to the middle part of the screen, which is your mapping and all your application functions to the bottom part of the screen, which is controlling your air conditioning and certain things like hazard lights as well. Everything's through the screen. Everything's through the screen. There's not even a button on the side door for opening windows or closing windows or locking the door. It's all centralized in the middle portion as well, which helps reduce costs, I guess. It's exactly that. It's about simplifying and taking out unnecessary cabling where perhaps that would have added an extra percentage of costs. That's really made it in terms of a price point, very attractive. Outside as well, I think you can really test that it's a really well-designed car, just in terms of the way it looks. It's very distinctive. I mean, it's still, even though for four months now driving it, it's still a hit turn for many people to see this car coming and asking what type of car it is. I think all in all of all, they really have got a really compelling package, both exterior and interior, in terms of its design. No, it's very interesting. One of the headturning features, I think, the headlights, which I think they call them the hammer of four headlights, which are quite distinctive, but you're quite right about the simplicity of the vehicle. In fact, there isn't a physical key, there isn't even a start/stop button in the vehicle. You simply get in, put it into, you put the little fob that comes with it. I don't know if you have to do this, but certainly in the review vehicle we were looking at, we had to place it on the NFC reader, in the front of the car where you charge your phone. Yes. And that would start the vehicle and you could take the fob away and put it in your pocket. Is that a requirement of driving the vehicle? You have to touch it there first, start the vehicle and then you can take it away. So there's a couple of, the plan, I think, is that they're going to phase in various ways of unlocking the car. The first phase is to give you this fob, which is really a proximity sensor. I actually keep mine in my pocket at all times and you're right. When you step into the vehicle, it actually, it unlocks by itself. The lights lights up, those hammer, lights lights up to welcome you. You get in the vehicle, there's no start/stop button, which is even a simplification of some of the most modern EVs ready today. But the car is essentially on when you're in the car as well. The other option they give you is these two sort of credit cards. And these can be linked to two different driver profiles. So for example, mine and my wife are two different profiles. So she's got her key. And she taps that key on a B-pillar of the car. The seat moves and it resets to her positioning. When I tap it, it resets to my positioning, including the mirrors. So some nice personalization options in there. But you don't necessarily need to leave that corky in the NSC reader because your phone actually goes there once you're driving because it's a wireless charger as well. The next phase I believe, which is a software update, will be the ability to unlock the car using a digital key in your iOS or your Android phone. Which is also a tap on the B-pillar with your watch or with your phone. And once you're in, you're basically driving. So it's a bit something to learn in terms of the security of the car. But once you're in it, it becomes very natural. When I looked at the vehicle and I looked at the design inside, my first thought was, this looks a lot like a Tesla Model Y. Do you think Tesla or Tesla, do you think Volvo set out to build the European Model Y with this vehicle? It's an interesting point. And a lot of people in a lot of forums have made that correlation. This is the closest thing that you can get to a Tesla in South Africa is the Volvo EX30 as it stands. I think Tesla has led the way in many respects in EVs, but particularly in the centralization of this panel, of this control system, the infotainment and minimizing everything else. When you think minimalist EVs, you automatically think Tesla, but I think Volvo have done a really good job to make it their own. I wouldn't say it's a copy, but it's definitely their own version of that type of design. Okay, so let's go through the positives and negatives of this vehicle. I think it's not with the negatives because there are fewer negatives and positives. For you, what are some of the downsides of this vehicle? If any? Yeah, it's a hard question to answer because I'm probably still in the movie of, well, this is a great EV overall. I think there are some compromises that you have to accept with a car, the SARS. This is something I knew all along, but for example, the rear seating is a little bit tight, but at the end of the day, it's understandable because it's really a compact SUV. That being said, and we can talk about it, I've taken a longer road trip with five adults in the car, four adults, sorry, and it was a comfortable trip, at least for most of the people. It's a major complaints or back issues or anything like that, so it can be done. And I think, again, where we are with the range of these cars is probably something we'll see improving over time. Right now, if you punish the car and you drive it too enthusiastically, you can reduce some of your range, but if you drive it properly, you can actually get really decent range out of the extended range of single motor version as well. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, you've taken on a long-distance trip already, and I think we're going to spend some time actually talking about that, because I think there'll be a lot of interest in what's involved in taking a long-distance trip in South Africa, for sure, in an EV that doesn't have an engine, a small engine backup like the BMW i3 had. It's a range-extender, a range-extender motor, y'all. So we'll get into that in a moment, but I think there were one or two things that I noticed in the vehicle that were perhaps where they cut corners, perhaps a little bit too much. One of them was the dash right across the front of the vehicle. I felt it looked a little plasticky and cheap. I think that for a very little additional money, they could have probably done a better job with the dash, especially the size of the glove box was really small in the center. It's a very small space. You could probably fit a small lady's handbag in there, not much else. So that was one downside, and I did notice, by the way, my knee, you're quite tall as well. Did you notice you all left knee tapping on the dash quite a bit? Just as if you really pushed that seat a little bit further forward. But again, you make a compromise for that, but you're going to compromise on the back seat if you do that. Yeah, for sure. And I must say, I didn't miss seeing a speedometer directly in front of me, but I think I'd get used to just glancing to the left to see it. But it is a little weird looking forward and down and seeing nothing directly in front of you. You're right. It really is something that is completely new to, I'd say, South African dramas and consumers, not to have anything in front of you, but I appreciate the actual pure driving experience in a way of not having any distraction ahead of you if you just want to enjoy the vehicle forward. It doesn't take long just to glance to the left and see that in your peripheral vision that speedometer is there for you. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's talk a bit about the positives then. I mean, this clearly must be one of the best entry-level EVs in South Africa. If I can call a $775,000 car and entry-level car, but in the EV category, I guess it is. And it has a lot of luxury with it. What are your thoughts on the luxury elements of the vehicle? Yeah. I mean, this is it. I think you spot on the price point for what it offers as an EV. If I just look at the performance, as you've mentioned already, the incredible acceleration, it's like having 100% torque available at zero RPM. And at any speed, I was actually doing 100 kilometers an hour and I thought it would be there. It was there. It was there. It's there on tap when you need it. It's almost, I've used an energy like bullet thumb in the matrix when everything else slows down around you and you've got full control of thumb. That's what it feels like to drive an EV. So that's a great positive. I think, as I said, the battery range is something that we evolve. But even as it stands now, this car offering around 400, 420 Ks of real-world range, if you drive it conservative, you drive it normally, is quite a practical range to have enough to find that is incredibly positive. Many people might think, well, an EV, you need to charge every night overnight. It's like a cell phone. The reality is, you don't really need to do that. So this car enables me to only worry about charging once every week, week and a half. So do you charge mainly at home? At home and at the office, actually. So as part of our sustainability drive, we're actually now using renewable energy in the office with two EV charges. And that's one of our employee value propositions we're offering. So I think you'll see more and more of that coming where corporations and enterprises are offering charging facilities as part of the package. So that makes it a big difference. So the positives are really the whole design, the package, and just the driving experience I think. Yeah. Okay. And you, I believe, have solar at home as well. Yes. And I presume that the office is solar as well. It's wheeling in into the waterfall area. Yeah, at-tech property is undergoing a renewable energy's wheeling project. So it's a combination of wheeling and clean energy from RPPs, but also having on-site solar on some of the tenant buildings. So ultimately, yes, that's an example of decentralized renewable energy working for the buildings, the tenants, and now for mobility, which is great. Yeah. So you're actually charging up your car with sun from the northern Cape, probably. That's right. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Isn't it? Okay. It looks like a sound bar in the front of the vehicle. Yes. I think it is a sound bar. The audio from that is pretty good. Absolutely. I mean, it's got a really amazing software-based equalizer. So quantum surround logic effects, you can tune to your own preference. As you say, it's a sound bar, I think, and another eight speakers are also within the car as well. So sound-wise, it's ridiculously loud if you really wanted that level. Yeah. But absolutely. And it was woofer as well, which you can feel if you're sitting in the passenger seat. That's the thing. That's the thing. And you know, when you're parking potentially in a parking lot or you're waiting for any particular reason, you can use the battery's immense, so you can use power, whatever you want. You're not going to use a 12-volt battery. Likewise, you can actually run the aircon in this car when your car's not even in the car. So, hypothetically, you go to a shopping center, you're in the sun for two hours, you can leave the aircon running. You come back to the car at 17 degrees and you've used 1% of your battery. You can't do that in any other type of vehicle. So those are really interesting little innovations. Yeah. Yeah. The other point I noted down was the interface. It's very clean. It's running software from Google. Do you know if that software that's running on Evolvo is some sort of custom software that Evolvo has developed in conjunction with Google, or is it a standard Google operating system that can be supplied to any vehicle manufacturer? Definitely Evolvo-specific software. But obviously in partnership with Google and Google Services, the middle part of the screen, as I said, is all about the user interface and the user experiences. So it comes with the Google Play Store. So you can connect via the mobile hotspot with your phone or with a Wi-Fi unit or in future that the ease of the car will actually also be enabled, I believe, in South Africa to use integrated data connectivity services. So it's constantly being able to connect to the internet, but you can choose apps to download. So for example, Angry Birds popped up the other day where you can start to play on the screen of the phone if you wanted to. It comes with a built-in Vivaldi web browser. So you can be using the internet with a full keyboard on it as well. I've even got DSTV streaming to work on the internet. Really? Amazing. Amazing. Not while you're driving. Just straight out of the Google Play Store. Straight out of the Google Play Store. We'll just put your credentials into the browser. Obviously you're logging in and you're doing a few things, but you could... It's running Android in effect. Running Android. Automotive. Not Android. Auto. Auto. For the car. For the phone, I mean. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fascinating. Do you use an Android or an iPhone? iPhone. And how does it integrate with the model? So that's one of the things that we've been promised and the whole world is waiting with its beta breath, all the EX30 customers for Apple CarPlay to become available within the car. That still isn't available, but it's been obviously communicated or will come in the future over the air update. But now you have to kind of work with Bluetooth for the media and Google Maps for your navigation and a few other things. So you can't really take advantage of Apple's podcasts and music and so on too easily. So it's a better experience if you have an Android phone right now. I wouldn't say better, but it's definitely more familiar because you're an Android person. You would know how Google services work in general. It's Android Auto support because I didn't actually try to connect Android Auto support. That I don't think so. I think it's because it's got Android automotive, you can get all the apps you want, but then if you're an iPhone user, you can get Apple CarPlay in future. Because of course, CarPlay and Android are really just screens, there's nothing behind it. It's projections onto your screen, rather than being something that's integrated with your vehicle. Exactly. But I must say, I think even when Apple CarPlay does come out, for me, I would probably keep using the Google services because they've got integrated charging locations inside the Google Maps in that version. So when you start driving around, it actually tells you what's your state of charge when you leave and what's your state of health going to be instead of charge when you get this. That isn't available in Apple CarPlay, the Google version. So I think a couple of nuances to the way it's implemented. Okay. Interesting. Now, you mentioned that there have been a number of software updates to the EXC that you say you've been on this journey of the software updates with the EXC that I've taken them in a lot of them. Tell us through that process. Sure. What you've seen. So the first version that came out was version 1.2, 1.2.1, those were the shipped versions that came out in March. Very shortly after that, 1.3 came out, 1.3.1 came out. What Volvo are doing is actually globally, saying, "Here comes the release. This is the version. This is the features that are coming out." You can go to a dealership and get that loaded in the meantime or wait for three weeks. Then what will happen is it will become available for an OTA over the air update on your display. That happened with me. I was on version 1.2, 1.2.1, and then it pops up saying version available, "Can I start downloading?" I said, "Yes." I will say that there was a little bit of a hiccup in the first download because it got to 91 percent and then stopped downloading. It was only because of a connectivity issue, I believe, with the back end and the ease in the car, and many other users felt this. This caused a little bit of a ripple in forums around the world that this is a bit of a problem, but Volvo quickly rectified it, and I actually went to a dealership, managed to get mine updated from 1.2 to 1.4, and immediately you can see a whole lot of new features, the way the menus work, and in fact like new features for where it actually detects sunlight coming into the side windows, and it will compensate for that using the econ automatically, depending on that. Some interesting features for that, but it's a bit of a journey. I think the next version, 1.5, hopefully we fingers crossed, we'll see the Apple core plane, a few others, and the digital key, as I mentioned, coming out, but I think the point is this is how software-defined vehicles are becoming more and more of a thing in South Africa, where the cars are being shipped with a certain version and new features are just going to be released down the line for the perpetuity of the core. They've become computers on wheels, right? Almost cell phones, they are, so iOS gives you features, so will Volvo give you features in the future, including performance upgrades, maybe you get a 3.2 second into a hundred in future. Well, at the moment we actually buy our phones, one of the factors we consider when buying our phones is how many software updates we're going to get, which is one of the reasons the Samsung is how I'm saying, will give you seven years of updates to match Apple, which also offers about seven years of updates on the iPhone and the iPad. Do you think that's going to become a selling feature on cars and future Volvo promising you're going to get 10 years of updates on this vehicle for after purchase? Absolutely. You know, the promises that are packaged in four years of connectivity services with Google's services as well, and then after that, you start to look at options to extend that subscription, but this is the way the world is moving. Subscription models for certain features in a car, certainly not things that you would expect to be default, like seat heating and so on, would probably be never what you would see. You need to pay extra four, but it's... This is exactly why there was a bit of a backlash there, I think, but it's for features that are, you know, really compete even anticipated. Things like JNI, chat GPT interfaces to your car, imagine having a manual, all loaded up in a chat GPT interface as a feature that you could pay for, and you can just speak to your car if you notice something wrong or those are the things I think you'll start to see in terms of software coming out. Fascinating. Fascinating. One thing I did want to ask about was, and it's the middle of winter while we're doing this test, and this vehicle was clearly designed for the European market. It has a very large glass roof, which can't be opened. Your experience has that heated the car up as a result of the African sun beating down on it. I was admittedly quite nervous about that panoramic roof when I first got the car, and in fact, I was sort of on the fence about that spec. I have taken a delivery of the car, which does come with that roof. The research I did on it was that it's got a very well-designed infrared layer, which really reflects out any of the... All of the UV for one thing, and it lets through just really the ambient light. So if you're sitting in the car and you're looking up through it, you can see an amazing view. It's really bright and sunny on a sunny day. If I got out the car and looked at it from the top down, it's actually black. You can't see it. No. So it's an incredible optical technology that I've put in place there. I do believe you can get a pop-up cover if you want to put it into the car. I've kept that on the back burners where they really need it. Maybe talk to me in a year once you go through a proper summer if I really think it's necessary. But so far, I think it's really an amazing design. But you didn't find yourself getting too hot in your drive down to Whad River, which is a hot pot of the country. Not at all. Not at all. No. Not at all. I think it should be fine. Yeah. Okay. And how much money are you saving? Having switched to an EV. I mean, one of the reasons people consider EVs is that in theory, the cost of electricity is low and the cost of petrol. Yes. How much are you saving every month? Given that you're charging the office and charging on so long at home, as much as possible at home? Yeah. No, the mess is straightforward. If you are driving a car where you need to spend 1,000, 2,000 a month on two tanks of fuel to do something like 2,500, 3,000 kilometers, that's your equivalent cost that you're basically burning every time you go to a fuel station, charging at home via solar, okay, you definitely need to have enough kilowatt peak capacity on your roof so that ideally you are putting all the surplus energy that your house is not using into the cotton, ideally without drawing from the grid. Without drawing from the grid. Exactly right. You don't want to be in a situation where you only have sort of subsidizing from solar and then you're still tapping into the grid after that and I guess there are ways of controlling that as well. You can actually, I don't know if the vehicle does it, but certainly you can add components to your electrical infrastructure to 100% to determine how quickly the vehicle gets charged based on the amount of available sunlight. Exactly. And it's all software actually. Okay. So both the vehicle has this and my wall box charger, we've got a sliding scale where I can limit the current going into the car to my own choice. So if I see there's only say three kilowatts of peak solar available, I can drop the current down from 32 amps to 16 amps and going into the car and I can just sort of match that. Or I can set up my wall box charger to do that automatically for me so that it just tracks as that solar curve goes, it just ensures always that you're only having enough solar going and not drawing from the grid. So if you really manage it carefully, you can really get away with not tapping into the grid and saving that 3000 random month and fuel on a monthly basis. So I always say, every time you go and fill up with fuel, you might as well have just bought yourself one solar panel. That's pretty much what you've just paid for. And if you can look at it that way, ultimately it's the equation makes sense. Yeah. For sure. You basically have a wall box charger. Is that a Volvo specific charger or is it something you had? It's a third-party charger. It's like a little white box or a black box and I've got it connected directly into my DB board. Got a dedicated circuit that runs from that wall box for 32 amps to the DB board. And it's on the inverter essential circuit. So that means even during load shedding, which is key, that the sun available, the car can charge. So that's really never a blocking point with the without load shedding. Yeah. That's netting. That's netting. Okay. And the last question I wanted to ask you on the car itself was what impact does it had on your insurance? You were mentioning before we started recording that you had a, I think it was a Toyota Corolla Cross before? Yes. And that the insurance on that was actually significantly higher than it has turned out to be on the Volvo. Why is that? It was interesting. When I was for shopping around for insurance, you know, I compared, obviously you compare prices, but stood out to me that my insurer provided a price to me that was lower than what the Toyota Corolla Cross hybrid was. And reasons were just, well, Volvo isn't as much of a hijack target as Toyota apparently is. We can look at the data bar on that. Secondly, being a battery electric vehicle, there just aren't any parts to be stripped out of this car besides the battery, which is, you know, a half voltage piece of kit and you really need to know what you're doing. Yeah. Exactly. So let's not assume that that's not a target, it's in the future. And, you know, for those reasons, the pricing actually came in at least about $150,000 cheaper per month than what I was paying. So overall, I mean, happy customer, I think, despite the Volvo being a significant, more expensive car. You're paying less than the street. I will say maybe that the story on tracking the, like, discovery, for example, tracks your vitality, drive points by how well you drive. Just a funny story is when I'm driving on the N1 and I put this car into autonomous driving mode, which is level two, meaning you've got to keep your finger on the wheel. But it's pretty much breaking and accelerating and steering for you. And even with that doing its own thing, discovery, vitality, drive was catching up to Volvo's automatic drive for quite a few times for harsh acceleration or harsh braking compared to the sensor. So it's almost like two AR models battling each other here and I'm the loser in terms of vitality, drive points. So in summary, you'd recommend this car. I take it. I think so. You know, there are a range of new EVs that are promised to come to South Africa, but I really think Volvo have done a great job in almost getting the first move of advantage in this price bracket for this feature set, for the technology that they provide, and just the overall experience that they're offering, I think you really would do well to find another car that can compete at that level. You know what they've got. Any other company I've noticed in this price category is BYD, the Chinese vendor, OEM. Have you had a chance at all to look at driver, be it vertical? Yes. Head to the Volvo. Excellent car. I mean, this is one of the key things where we start to see is that the Chinese brands are making exceptionally good quality cars, especially in the EV range, and BYD is a world leader at the moment. So the ATO3, the Dolphin Mini, hopefully coming in the future, are all going to come through it at lower price points than the Volvo, but that really does come down into a choice of subjectiveness on the design and some of the features that each car offers. I've driven the BYD at O3 a couple of times, fantastic acceleration and drive experience as well. The only challenge I guess is to become more familiar to South Africans. When you say BYD, it's BYD, what? Yes. So you've got to kind of explain, this is build your dreams. It's a Chinese brand, and this is where they are in the world. The number one seller in China right now, in a way ahead of Tesla and VW and the likes. So I expect to see more from them, I'm sure. Right. Let's rate the Volvo EX city then. Value for money. What would you give it out of 10? About an eight. Okay, and the driving experience. That's a 10 out of 10. 10 out of 10. For an EV driver, it's fantastic. Great. Overall? Overall. Eight and a half. Eight and a half. Solid eight and a half. Yes. Okay. Let's do the second part of this discussion and that's to talk about the EV market in South Africa, what's holding it back, what's not holding it back, what consumers are thinking, what the government is doing, et cetera, et cetera. There's quite a lot of ground to cover. So my first question, we haven't had load shedding now for touch wood for 120 days, 130 days, but it's constantly warning that it could come back that the reserve margin is not that great. And if there's a breakdown in generating plant, we could see a return to load shedding. In your view, is there a place for electric vehicles in a market like South Africa where clearly there's a major energy constraint? Absolutely. And for multiple reasons, I think we can look at it from an angle of just the decarbonization that the world needs to go through in general and transportation and mobility being a huge factor in that space. Economically, South Africa has a very healthy automotive export market, but if we don't transition to where the world is going and meet the demand of where the world markets are and what type of vehicles and technologies they demand, we could fast become irrelevant as a manufacturing destination. Beyond that, just the ability to really drive these types of vehicles on a mass scale, not only in the private passenger vehicle market, but also in the public sector as well, many bus taxis, buses, trucks that are all moving in that direction. All of the indicators, all of the market shifts are showing that this is a positive move to make and we've seen those lessons being learned around the world. I don't think South Africa can afford not to make this transition and we just need to have a collective effort on the energy supply side to be able to cater for this future demand. It makes no sense, though, to your point that we have potentially 500,000 EVs on the road by 2030 that are all charging off Eskim burning coal to supply the energy for these cars. That's why the current trajectory we are on, I think, on renewable rollout decentralization of energy, people putting solar on their roofs, corporations putting solar on their office parks is all fantastic foundational groundwork for a future where you've got distributed energy and mobility also benefiting from it. We know that the previous Minister of Trade and Industry, Abraham Patel, he was very slow in making changes to the EV policy environment in South Africa from both the manufacturing perspective and the consumer perspective, but from the consumer perspective, he often made the comment that given South Africa's energy constraints, there's no urgency on his part to stimulate demand in the South African market by cutting the taxes on EVs. Did he have a point? I think he had a good intention with that statement, but the reality is we're not talking massive volumes here. There's around 12 million, maybe more cars on South African roads, by allowing demand sides and sensors to actually come into the mix, we're not going to replace those 12 million vehicles with EVs overnight. It's going to be in the thousands to start with, and then maybe the tens of thousands in the next two to three years up to sort of half a million by 2030. In that as a fraction, it's less than 7, 5%, 7% of the total car park in South Africa, so there's no real risk to an overwhelming situation that you've got 12 million cars suddenly to charge off Eskons group. While I think he made the point that it's an important factor to consider, it's definitely not a constraint that we should be economically bound to. I think, as I just said, I think there's so much happening that exponentially we will be able to get there when the demand actually picks up. It's quite interesting to see what happens on the political side of things, not just here in South Africa, but globally. European countries for the last few years have been very much incentivizing the purchase of EVs. Even the US under the Biden administration has been incentivizing EVs, and the Trump has now said that on day one, if he's elected and assumes office in January next year, he's going to scrap all the EV subsidies and mandates that Joe Biden introduced during his term in office, so it's quite a flexible fluid environment globally at the moment. Do you think that South Africa should be subsidizing EVs or taxing them less than we do so-called ICE vehicles or internal combustion engine vehicles? This is the reason, historically South Africa has had, as I said, seven OEMs in South Africa that are manufacturing ICE vehicles predominantly for the export market. Some of them even doing some hybrid components in these cars as well. To make that transition, on the one hand side, the investment of the capital incentive of 150% has been announced in February by the finance minister to encourage the OEMs to transition over the course of the next three or four years to be able to make EVs inside Africa. The problem is that OEMs globally are not going to make the decision to invest that money unless there's a healthy domestic demand for those products being made in the country. We can't just have South Africa making cars for an export market and no local consumption, so we have to take us to the economies of scale. Economies of scale, and to be quite honest, South Africa is not the ideal geographic location or destination for making cars in the first place. The reason that exists is because we've got a very good export policy which is working on imports and rebates, it's the APDP2, but that's not enough on its own just for these OEMs to make the decision. So many of the OEMs who want to make EVs in South Africa are saying, well, we're not competing with each other to do this, we're competing with other locations in the world, for example, in Morocco or Egypt or Indonesia that are closer to the markets where EVs are being sold. And South Africa kind of gets relegated to the back bench when it comes to that decision. So absolutely, we need to make EVs more affordable, more attractive and at a certain entry price level that when a prospective customer walks into a dealership, they've got a choice of between an EV at the same price as an arse vehicle at the same price. And then for all the reasons we've discussed around fuel savings and maintenance savings and lower decarbonisation or emissions, they make the right decision to go EV. And that needs some domestic stimulation. So yes, I'm hoping that maybe with the new government or national unity that the right policies are considered and that maybe there's a bit of an EV task force that forms between the private and public sector to really look at the situation, unpack what incentives will work, even model out what incentives will work. And it's bold is to say, let's drop import duties at least to price parity of the arse vehicle, even drop them all together for a period of time that we can monitor and just see how the uptake goes and bring them back when we've got an EV manufacturing industry to protect. Because it makes no sense to have an import duty or an EV to protect an industry that doesn't really exist yet and EVs are being punished right now that the taxes are actually higher on an EV than they are on an arse vehicle. Do you know the numbers? I mean, how is that tax structured currently? So there's a couple of factors happening there. There's the straight import duty itself, which is 25% on an EV versus 18% on an arse vehicle. However, that 25% applies to vehicles not coming out of Europe. So it's more around other sources. Over and above that, there's another thing called the ad valorem tax. And this hasn't been looked at for about 30 years now when a luxury car was deemed to be anything over 200,000 grand. So even if you're buying an entry level swift, for example, you're paying some scale percentage of luxury tax on that vehicle. So that could be re-looked at completely and completely changed to be more affordable for the general consumer. So a combination of those two things can really change the game, I think, for allowing more companies to actually release their EVs and many are on the fence. I mean, all the brands have got EVs waiting in the wings, but are waiting to see how to make it affordable and even take a cautious approach. I mean, VW launched the RD4 last week, very exciting product. But that's coming here, isn't it? It is, yeah. There's 10 of them here. And they're doing test fleets at fantastic car. But they haven't announced a price point yet and have only announced that it's going to be available for leasing versus purchasing in the first phase because price point is just unclear out now as to what people will accept. Interesting. I mean, if we were to scrap taxes on these vehicles, how could the prices come down on say an EX30? Are we talking five to six digits here? Well, yeah. I mean, the price range on an EX30, about $775 to about a million, depending on the spec. I mean, you take off that 25% of that, you're taking off maybe $150,000 rent, $200,000 rent, and suddenly you're down to sort of $550 for an EX30 spec car, which is phenomenal. I mean, that is almost becoming like a no-brainer. Is that what you're paying for that vehicle in Europe, roughly? In Europe, the price point is around, they call it the $35,000 car or the $35,000 euro car. Right. So if you just calculate that R650,000, you'll see where the price point lands. As you say, the inflation reduction act in the US, there are tariffs or incentives in Europe which make it even cheaper. So the benefiting from that, where we're in South Africa, we just have to pay whatever duties land on us. Is the EV infrastructure supporting infrastructure, charging stations, et cetera, adequate in South Africa now? Do you think? I mean, you've had some experience driving the national roads. Do you feel that there are enough charging stations, both on the highways and in the city itself? Yes. So if you just limit your driving to in-city, then you've got sort of your home charger, you've got your work charger, and you've got a couple of fuel stations like the Pantry, for example, the Cecil, garage, and Rosebank, where you've got the ability to park for 30 minutes in charge. You won't have a problem getting around an urban area. The question now becomes, in everyone's mind, but I want to do a trip to Durban. I want to do a trip to Nalsprayt, for example, what drivel like I did. And then you start to think, well, are there charges out there? And where do I even start to look? And the reality, actually, is that we have about 380 to 400 DC fast charges and AC slow charges around the country. It's just that you really need to know the apps to use and sort of websites to go to to find them. And that's a bit of an effort to go through, and there will be, I believe, a lot more effort put into the custom education that's needed to show people that it's possible. The car, though, tells you where to find an EV station as well. I noticed in Google Maps, it's the voice interface that you expect with Google Assistant. So you just talk to the car and say, "Where's the nearest charging station?" And it could tell you. Exactly. So that's a great user feature. My recommendation is that you don't leave it to the last minute when you start asking those questions of the car. You really want to know where you're going beforehand. So maybe let me talk a bit about this trip to what river in bed. Let's go ahead and use it as an example. So, I mean, that was about a 380km drive from sort of mid-range, let's say, to what river. The plan that I made was to, you know, try and get there was just one stop, as you would stop anyway, for a petrol break or, you know, some lunch. If you have some lunch or coffee. And when I looked at my mapping, there's a really good app called ABRP, A Better Root Planner. In fact, anyone can download it, and you can actually start simulating your own future EV drives if you want to. Okay. But it plans out. It says, right, you want to go, you want to start with a 100% charge. So typically, you never charge your battery more than 80%, but I charged it mine up to 100% the night before we left on an early on a Saturday morning, got to the charging point that I wanted to, which was millies on the end form. It's a little farm market from the shut-a-dop, just past my shut-a-dop. And I had 35% charge left, and I'd done about 250Ks already. So comfortably with the limits, no-range anxiety at all, and a very, very pleasant drive, cruise control most of the way. I then put in about, for about 20 minutes, charge about 17 kilowatt-hours into the battery. That brought me up to 66%. That was to be in a DC station. It was a DC station. It was a Rubicon 80 kilowatt charger, so literally 20 minutes. My wife grabbed some coffee and we were ready to go. I must just say, when people see cars charging at these stations, the amount of interest that you get is crazy. It's actually overwhelming. There were queues of people asking, "How does this work?" So I think there's a curiosity out there. We noticed the same when we were testing, yeah. Exactly. So it's great to see, and I love to sort of engage with people on that. So, and off we went, and our next destination was really to get to Riverside Mall in North No spread. No spread. That's got 150 kilowatt DC charger. Wow. Yeah. So, again, got there. The beautiful thing at the moment is that you can drive right up to the charger and inevitably it's open. So it's not like you're queuing. Pops in there, started the charge from 45% up to 100% grabbed a lunch 40 minutes later. You know, I got a notification on my EX30 app that the charging had complete. We weren't feeling finished lunch yet. So it's not like we were standing at the call waiting for a to charge. And off we went, and then spent the night at some family. And then I didn't even bother to even top it up again when we left on the Sunday morning. Straight back again, got to Millie's, I think I had about 50% charge. But I got there, did a sort of quick burst of a charge, another 15 kilowatt hours, maybe we went up to 80%. And then from there all the way home. And that was it was actually, if I can say, disappointingly easy to get to get to right river and back. So when people feel that there's a lack of charges, it's more of a perception. Right now there are enough charges, run about 400 for the amount of EVs on the roads, which is around about 400,000, 5000, tracks at a ratio of about 1 to 10. And that's roughly the ratio that Europe is using. Okay. When they've got about 600,000 charges and about 600,000, so it's just about keeping track with the growth and making sure that the capacity is there. Yeah. Fascinating. But I do wonder if you wanted to take a less busy route, I mean the N4 to Nel spread down to Muputo is a very busy corridor, if you wanted to drive from Johannesburg to Cape Town via Uppington for example, would you make it? I'm with a bit of an unfair question because I know you haven't done the route. I haven't done it. But I absolutely believe I could make it with the right planning. And so right now, yes, you do need that planning. And you also need to be assured ahead of time that the charger is functional. That's also an issue. Sometimes people have got two charges and it's broken or one half of the charger isn't working. So they've had to queue behind two or three other cars that are using that charger. So there are teething issues. But this is like the first cellphone networks in '93. There are patches where there isn't coverage. So if we're willing to accept that, I think we will see the growth coming and we'll see it working. Question, do you drive around, especially on long distance trips with an extension cord in your vehicle? No, but I do have a slow charging cable with me, which has allowed me to charge through a three-prong plug. That's what I mean. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm just wondering what the etiquette is. For example, you book an Airbnb near the Kruger or something. You go there and then do you plug your car in without chatting to the Airbnb first? I mean, these are things that we're going to have to figure out as a society, right? It's a charging etiquette. Yeah, exactly. Do you steal some charge on the side from your bathroom or do you inform your guests to us? It's an interesting space to be in just to see that. For sure. For sure. Okay. So what's your next route? What are you planning to do next in your vehicle that's going to challenge it? Well, we are planning sort of a longer range trips. I think we'd like to do a urban trip as well. I think that's a very well-established corridor. There are a number of charging points that you can pick up along the way there. Right. But as you said, I think it's more interesting to do the road less traveled and people want to have confidence that they can do these kind of in seven, in eight, in nine roads rather than the in one, in two, in three year and have a place to charge. And maybe I can just mention, I think there's some really exciting developments coming around in charging network infrastructure. One of the charging groups I've seen with an amazing plan is Zero Carbon Charge. So what they're doing is they've plotted out every 150 kilometers on all these roads as where they'd like to drop a Haspi DC charger. Okay. So there's an off-grid approach. So in other words, they go to a landowner, discuss with him about putting down a solar farm with a battery energy storage system. We've written about these guys, actually. I think so. Interesting company. Absolutely. And I think that we need to see more of those types of companies emerging which are going to cater for the 500,000 EVs that we want to see on these roads. We need 50,000 charges then, not just 500. So where they're going to come from is the question and it has to come from companies offering sustainably sourced clean energy, Haspi DC chargers at interesting locations. Not maybe your electricity, but your farm stalls and your pet stalls and those sort of places that are more family-oriented. Yeah. I'd always assumed that these things would just be installed at garages but that's not necessarily going to be the case. That customer experience is evolving now. You don't necessarily have to go and queue there anymore. You can go and see some farm animals with your kids, for example, for 30 minutes. So it's exciting to see where it will go. So the main players in the EV charging space, GridCars, we've had a chat on this show with the CEO in Stonya Donne, there's Rubicon you mentioned and Ziracob and Charger. Those are main players in the space. Look, GridCars and Rubicon are really the pioneers, both of them. Without them and their investments and their ambition and vision, we wouldn't even have the infrastructure. So I think they really have done fantastic. But it's opened up the market for new entrants as well and we'll see more and more of them Ziracob and I think one of them, there's a couple of others I think that are considering some entry points as well. But to be honest, it's almost like growing out another Vodacom and Intian and Salki and Tocom. These are the players that are emerging that all will be able to integrate with each other. So you'll have a single charging card, hopefully. You're all interoperable at the moment. You're interoperable with the backends now sort of working together. So you load your card once, you tap it on these stations, when you need them. And you just get billed that way and all of them reconcile on the back end. So I think that's it. But again, if you can depart, your point of departure with 100% of your battery charged off your own solar, that's already 400 Ks in the bank that you've got on your trip. And yes, if you get to the resort and you can charge off the resort off, they've got a destination charger themselves, then off you go again, you top up and then you only need those kind of Husband DC chargers along the way. This needs a little bit of planning, but probably not too much. Not too much. It'll become more and more a natural, I think, over time, but you won't even think about it. That's it. That's it. I have wondered, though, I mean, we spoke about the Joe Big Durban route, which is obviously very, very busy in December. What happens on, I don't know, the 1st of January, when everyone's driving back to Joe Big, you know, there's a bunch of EV charging stations around Harry Smith. What happens when there are 3000 cars, 3000 cars an hour going on the N3 back to Joe Big, is it just inevitably going to meet long queues, or do you, as an EV owner, not travel in those days? A bit of both. So I think playing around those kind of high intensity travel days as much as possible, to be honest, if we start hitting that problem seriously, where you're in a queue of 10 to get to two charges on near Harry Smith, I think we're in a very good place as a country, because a lot of things would have had to have happened to get us to that level. But what I have heard from the charging point, guys, is that it's not a long time to spin up and add another Huspy DC charging unit there. The only trick is that there needs to be enough grid capacity, supplying that location. And some of these locations are quite rural. That's true. And sometimes, if there isn't enough capacity, then you can put 100 kilowatt charger down, but it's going to have to get split in terms of what it can provide, say, 250 kilowatt charging sessions of 1/100 kilowatt chargers. So planning it all around, planning on the driving side as the consumer and planning on the operator's side as the network provider. Okay. So anything else holding back EVs? I mean, we've spoken to our taxes, we've spoken about the charging infrastructure. What else is keeping South Africans from buying EVs? I know that at one stage, I don't know if it's still the case, there was concern that the batteries on these cars wouldn't last all that long, and then the consumer would be settled with a huge bill to have the battery replaced. Yeah. It's a good point you bring up because in reality, what's actually happening is that these batteries are lasting a lot longer than expected. And when I say that, I mean, most batteries on a new EV have an eight-year warranty. But reality is that they're lasting up to 15 years and still having around about an 80% state of health, meaning that you can charge a battery up to 80% and still get 80% of the range. That's 15 years later. If you take a step back, I mean, who really keeps their car for 15 years before trading it in on a new one? And so that's different in terms, that's quite a long time. So at the same time as there are recycling operations starting up for EV batteries, you seeing this in the UK, Europe and the US, companies like Redwood Materials, BASF and others are all setting up recycling sensors in anticipation of a flood of these EV batteries coming off the market. The problem is it's not enough feedstock coming out of the EV drivers here because they're lasting so long. So it's again, and one of these misnomers that you're going to have to pay a fortune to change that battery one day, you know, sorry for you. It's not the case. I mean, what will happen is that battery, when it eventually has its end of life as a vehicle battery, or move into a stationary purpose battery, you know, maybe it moves into a storage place at an EV charging station or in a building or a house. So I think that's, you know, not something to worry about as a consumer, and it shouldn't be held back on that decision. Okay. The biggest decision or the biggest point for me really, Duncan, is the price point. Right. It's really the price point. I mean, South Africa, 60% of the market is for cars that are less than 400,000 range in terms of new car sales. We don't have an EV that's less than 400,000 range yet. So with the right combination of policies, incentives, cost optimization and the cars, if we can get a car in at sort of the 350K price point, and suddenly you're in line with the current hatchbacks that are out there, that I think will start to spark the interest, I think, in the mass market, which is really where we want to see the bond. How far away from that? Not far. Not 350,000 EV. Not far. Some of the guys, the Chinese vendors, really have got those price points already in play in China. It's just the taxes that are pushing them up here. Exactly. Even if you doubled that price and put the 100% tax on them, we would still be able to get to that price range. The challenge really and what we will need to see how all the OEMs kind of fit together and find their own competitiveness and differentiators for their price points that they're bringing it in. But as I said, all of them have got an EV that could compete at a certain price point to make this popular. We just need to pull the trigger and go. Okay. What about the resale value of these vehicles? Are we seeing any data on that yet? If you look at AutoTrader, you look at Coza, there's about, I'd say, 250 Coz EVs that are currently in the second-end market. You can pick up a BMW R3 now for anything between, I've seen, 280,000 rand up to about 420,000 rand, and that's for a 2016, 2018, 2019 model, R3, BMW. So that's been around about eight, nine years, and that's sort of the price point from about 600,000 where it's not it. So 50% kind of reduction. How does that help with that compared to an ice vehicle in terms of the reduction you'd see in the resale value? I think you'll see more of a dramatic effect in the reduction and the value of the vehicle at the top end of the market, faster than you would see at the lower end of the market. It's all relative. If you say it decreases about 20%, you'll see it lower on the lower end versus the high end. But I'll say this, the volvos that are sitting in the market on the second-hand side are selling pretty much at a very competitive resale value, up to 90% of the new car price. And that's for a year-old model. So again, this is why many OEMs are just testing the market with their future residual values and going for lease options so that they can at least assure the customers that there's a guaranteed future value to that vehicle, even if you take the risk now, and lease a car for 48 months. But that being said, I mean, thinking is at least the three years it should be the same as an ice vehicle, if not better, after three years, the data still has to become available. Okay. But it's holding up nicely. It's not like the resale value is very poor on these things. And so that's particularly because we can protect those values more than what's happening overseas where those incentives are now competing with second-hand models. And that's why second-hand models are dropping in value as well. Ah, of course. Yeah. Good point. Let's explore, Greg, a little bit more about home charging. How realistic is it to charge your vehicle entirely with your own solar? Yes. You know, I think many people assume, "Will you get home? You just plug it in." But that's not necessarily the case. You actually probably don't want to keep this vehicle topped up to 100% all the time because that's not good for the battery. And you might only need to charge it if you're just using it to commute at the weekends, which you could then do in the Sunday shining. Exactly. Is that what you do? That's exactly. It's a whole new mindset to commuting and driving. You know, typically in an arse world, you fill up a tank once a month or the beginning of the month, you drive it until you ten days to go and you're going to refuel. That's a common way to do it. Whereas in the EV world, you kind of want to keep your battery between 20% and 80% or 90% maximum and not deviate too much above that for two reasons. Even as if you go below 20%, that initial charging time is longer, then it takes longer than if you start at 20% and go above. And also once you hit that 80% to 85% mark, the battery kind of slows down. You can imagine an analogy of a bucket. And if you take a hose pump at full blast and you spray into that bucket, it fills up pretty quickly, but it's very rough. It's really a lot of friction. And you've got to kind of start turning the tap down before it gets to the top so you don't spill out any wasted energy works the same in a battery. So it's very important to keep your battery between that 20% and 80%. But then it becomes a thing of, well, I just need to charge when I get to 20%. I don't need to worry about, you know, charging it to full every time I need to use it. It's just for the next week's commuting and it's a different mindset just to get your mind around. Okay. Fascinating. It's been a fascinating conversation. It's always good to hear from the owner and driver of a vehicle rozzles and the journalist who spent a week or two and they're trying desperately to summarize everything in a short period of time. You've had several months to spend with the ex-city so it's been great to get your insights not only on that, but also on the state of the EV markets in South Africa more generally and we'd love to invite you on the show again at some point, maybe on a regular basis to talk about how the market is developing. I think that'll be very useful for our audience if you don't mind. Absolutely. It's been an absolute pleasure being here with you, Duncan, so thanks for the opportunity. Super excited about the future of EVs in the country. And we could go and what it's going to mean for us, so yeah, watch the space as we see. And Greg Kreis is of course principal director, automotive and e-mobility at Accenture. Thank you so much for talking to Tech Central today. Pleasure. Thank you. Thanks, Greg. Thanks, Duncan. Great. Thank you. (electronic music)