ADDIS ABABA, July 27 (The Southern African Times) – Electric cars are increasing in popularity thanks to companies like Tesla and legacy car manufacturers are starting to take them seriously. This has led them to come up with new electric cars, and most importantly ramp up production across the world
Consequently, Ethopia is now a beneficiary of the electric car revolution. Ethiopia today announced that they will be locally assembling electric cars from the major car manufacturer, Hyundai.
Ethiopia’s Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed Ali received the first electric car fully assembled locally by a Hyundai dealership, Marathon Motors. The Prime Minster noted that such investments “support the country’s climate resilience and greening ambitions.”
The car in question looks like the Hyundai IONIQ which debuted in its home country of South Korea in 2016. The 2016-2018 versions had a 28Kwh battery pack while the 2020 version has a bigger 38.3kwh battery back which they say can give you upto 200km and 274km of range respectively.
The batteries can be apparently charged up to 80% in 33 minutes on a 50kW station or in 24 minutes at a 100kW fast-charging station. However if you charge it at home in the 220-240volt means like in your house, 100% of range can be added with an overnight charge.
It has a single electric motor that generates 120 horsepower with 295Nm of torque for the 2016-2019 versions or 134hp and the same amount of torque with the 2020 version, which is a similar power figure you get from 1.5 to 2.0 liter gasoline cars.
Marathon Motors was reported to have invested half a billion birr (Kshs 1.5 billion) on the assembly plant. The assembly plant has the capacity to assemble 10,000 cars per year. One of the shareholders of Marathon Motor Engineering is the famous Ethiopian long distance athlete, Haile Gebreselassie who was present at the handover ceremony today.
