File picture for illustration. An employee fixes a Mercedes star to a car's bonnet during the production of 'S-Class' Mercedes Benz cars at an assembly line. Picture: EPA-EFE/FRANZISKA KRAUFMANN
At the risk of sounding like a Cyril Ramaphosa groupie, it is sad to see how supposedly intelligent and well-read “commentators” jumped on the bandwagon after Thursday night’s State Of the Nation Address.
Most chose not to believe the president when he said “things are being done” and focused instead on his alleged hot air and promises.
One of the saddest attempts to parrot this comfortable line came from Peter Bruce, once accused of being blind to any Ramaphosa faults. In his column in the Sunday Times yesterday, Bruce used his lack of understanding of the local and global automotive industry to portray Ramaphosa as being out of touch and selling unattainable dreams to South Africans.
Bruce may have heard the president’s reference to a $1 billion (about R14.5 billion) investment by Ford in its Silverton manufacturing plant, but his interpretation of that – and Ramaphosa’s comment about Toyota also making sizeable investments – was way off the mark.
He condescendingly pointed out to the president that soon there might be a shrinking market for our cars. He claimed the UK government’s plan (not finalised ) to ban all petrol and diesel cars from 2030 meant “no one is going to be buying a new petrol car there from 2024.”
Quite how he came to that conclusion is beyond me.
Worse was his next comment: “Being righthand drive and all, the UK is one of our auto industry’s biggest export markets.”
It may have escaped his attention that all the car makers who manufacturer or assemble in South Africa make both right and left hand drive versions of their vehicles.
So, BMW, Mercedes, Ford (which exports from Silverton to more than 100 markets, the vast majority of which are left-hand drive) and VW’s markets are far, far more than the UK. Ditto for Toyota, of which Bruce said: “I drive a Toyota Hilux, made in SA. But buying local does not secure our future.”
More ignorance. More than 50% of the production of our carmakers is for markets other than our own. Companies like Ford, Toyota and VW are actively focusing on the African, high-volume market, which is going to be one of the fastest-growing globally in the next decade.
And these blue-chip car makers are hard-headed businesspeople. They wouldn’t be here if Ramaphosa was merely a dream merchant.
Similarly, the assumption that the future of transportation is solely electric is naïve. Quite apart from the fact that there is growing global concern about the use of child labour in countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo – the world’s leading supplier of cobalt used in electric car and cellphone lithium-ion batteries – there is still a long way to go in terms of installing charging infrastructure worldwide.
In other words, internal combustion engines will be around for at least another 40 or 50 years. Just 14 countries worldwide have said they will ban these engines within the next few decades. Undoubtedly, there will still be a market – globally – for the cars produced in SA factories.
And given the progress being made by all of our local manufacturers in developing electric vehicles, our facilities here could easily switch or hybridise their production lines for zero-emission vehicles.
Criticise Ramaposa if you must, but use facts to do so…
Brendan Seery
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