It’s true that the current electric cars driven around the world aren’t made for Africa. In some African countries, charging a phone isn’t easy not to talk of charing a car. Couple that with the bad roads in the continent, and you would be right to say an electric car can’t survive African ruggedness.
However, the Technical University of Munich has just announced a prototype electric car, called aCar, which was specifically designed to cope with the ruggedness of the African road.
The university stated that it understands that most roads in Africa, especially in the rural Africa, have portholes and dirt, and so it designed the aCar, which can cope with flaws on the road and even withstand off-road driving. The aCar is a four-wheel drive electric car and uses an electric motor to propel its movement.
Aside from being an electric car, the design of the aCar is also modular. This means the car can be used for carrying passengers or be converted into a cargo carrier.
The car hasn’t been fully deployed into the African market, but it has been tested in Ghana, back in July, and the result from the test spelt out that the maximum range the car can go is 50 miles. When the aCar is finally released into the market, it will cost €10,000. That’s is about NGN4.24million in Nigeria, about GHS52,950 in Ghana, and about KHS1.23million in Kenya.
What do you think of the aCar? Will you buy it, when it is available?
Leave a Reply