ELECTRIC MOBILITY
Gardens distribution centre in Cape Town is on track to become the first in Africa running a fully electric truck fleet, with Centurion following close behind. Clicks wants 68 electric trucks on the road by the end of 2027 and more than 90 % of its national fleet electric by 2029, backed by more than R65 million spent on solar power, battery storage and charging kit. Each truck can carry 11.5 tonnes and manage 380km to 400km on a charge, and the 30-truck fleet alone is expected to save around 780 000 litres of diesel and keep roughly 2 000 tonnes of
CO 2 out of the air every year.
Long-haul freight is a tougher nut to crack. The batteries are heavy, which eats into how much a truck can carry, charging that much power needs expensive infrastructure; and trucks running between cities can ' t always get back to the same depot each night. So the first heavy-duty wins will keep coming from the controlled runs, regional distribution, ports, mines, depot-to-depot trips, until there ' s reliable, truck-friendly charging along the routes that actually matter.
What ' s still in the way GridCars says its payment network now covers more than 450 public charging stations around the country, but for a commercial fleet, that matters far less than what its own depot can handle. GreenCape points to a long list of headaches businesses run into, whether there ' s charging along the route or at the other end, how much power the depot ' s own connection can take, limits on demand at peak times, extra charges for charging during expensive periods, and the cost of upgrading the grid connection or adding solar and batteries. Try to charge every vehicle at once and you get an expensive spike in demand, so smart systems spread the charging out instead. Fleet electrification, in other words, is really an energy project wearing a transport project ' s clothes. applying the old rules unchanged can quietly cut how much cargo an electric truck is even allowed to carry. There ' s a manufacturing side to this too. Since 1 March, manufacturers who qualify can write off 150 % of what they spend building EV and hydrogen vehicle production capacity against tax, meant to help local factories keep up as export markets move away from petrol and diesel. That doesn ' t make an imported electric car any cheaper for a South African buyer, though, and it does nothing to sort out charging, fleet finance or worries about resale value. Protecting local manufacturing and building a market for these vehicles at home are two separate problems.
Growth isn ' t the same thing as everyone doing it. The passenger market is still held back by price and where you can charge, long-distance trucking still runs into trouble over weight limits and infrastructure, and even Woolworths has grown its fleet carefully rather than swapping out every delivery vehicle overnight. For now, the opportunity lies in picking the journeys that already suit the technology: high-mileage delivery routes, scheduled buses, city logistics, trucks running between fixed points. Depots, delivery zones, distribution centres – wherever the route is known and the vehicle earns its keep by working hard. That ' s where this is actually happening, not on some national deadline where everyone trades in their petrol car on the same day. �
“ The passenger market is still held back by price and where you can charge, long-distance trucking still runs into trouble over weight limits and infrastructure...”
Some of the barriers have nothing to do with batteries or chargers at all. Vieira Naudé argues South Africa urgently needs to rethink the payload and length rules built around petrol and diesel trucks, since electric vehicles carry weight differently because of their batteries, and
18 sabusinessintegrator. co. za