Automobile plants will produce electric vehicles to get licence renewal – NADDC

In a bid to promote the use of electric vehicles in Nigeria, the National Automotive Design and Development Council (NADDC) has said automobile assembly plants in the country would commit to produce a certain number of electric vehicles in the country to get their licences renewed.

The Director-General of NADDC, Jelani Aliyu, while inaugurating the technical Committee for the Development of National Action Plan on Electric Vehicle for Nigeria (NAIDP) yesterday in Abuja, said this is to avoid Nigeria being a dumping ground for petrol consumable cars as the world focuses attention on electric vehicles.

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Aliyu said with over N500bn invested in automobile industry, most are into production of Internal Combustion Engine (ICE), thus, NAIDP was passed into law to attract more investment in the sector with funding from the Central Bank of Nigeria.

“We have a number of licences that were given to assemblers in Nigeria. Most of them are doing ICE engines and a few are doing electric so we need to be very aggressive in incentivising the production of electric vehicles. As long as we are renewing licences, we have to put a certain percentage of vehicles that have been electric, otherwise no licence will be renewed or even if it is a new company, it will not be given a licence to begin with because we have to be really serious about this,” he said.

He added that with Hyundai producing its Hyundai Kona and Jet Systems producing its jet mover electric van, Nigeria can take the lead in production of electric vehicles in Africa with the adoption of the African free trade agreement.

Speaking, a representative from the Nigeria Energy Support Programme (NESP), Olumide Fatoki, said the use of off-grid solar plants  in rural areas could help to provide power-charging points to the vehicles and provide job opportunities in the communities they are located.