Climate change: Is Nigeria ready for electric vehicles in 2022?

Over last weekend, photographs of a broken down Tesla electric vehicle that had to be towed away on the Third Mainland Bridge in Lagos went viral.

Photos of the Tesla on top of towing vehicle were shared on Instagram by a user who claimed that the Tesla’s battery ran down while on the 11.8km bridge, that links Lagos Island with the Mainland.

The range of the base model Tesla Model 3, priced from about $44,000, is between 250km to 515km according to ev-database.org. Despite much interest in the brand, Tesla does not sell its cars in Africa yet, although it has two Supercharger stations in Morocco.

Judging from the comments on this post on social media, the question of whether Nigeria is truly a ready place for one to use an electric vehicle (EV) arises. This comes as the push for cleaner transportation as one of the means to mitigate climate change continues.

 

The push for electric vehicles

In 2012, a World Health Organisation (WHO) report recorded that 3.7 million people died prematurely because of air pollution.

Emissions from combustion engine vehicles – cars, motorbikes, buses and trucks – are the main sources of greenhouse gases (GHGs) that cause air pollution.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) in 2020 reported that transportation is still responsible for 24% of direct CO2 emissions from fuel combustion. Road vehicles – cars, trucks, buses and two- and three-wheelers – account for nearly three-quarters of transport CO2 emissions.

For the transport sector to meet projected mobility and freight demand while reversing CO2 emissions growth, energy efficiency measures will need to be deployed to maximum effect. One of the energy efficiency measures IEA recommends is “deploying energy-efficient technologies for vehicles and the fuels that drive them,” such as electrification that “enables the use of motors that are far more efficient than internal combustion engines.”

CO2 emission is part of the greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.

 

EVs have sold better than combustion engine vehicles

Despite the severe slump affecting the automobile industry following measures to stem Covid-19, the progress of EVs has carried on unabated and continues to attract both carmakers and consumers. This is according to the “Global Synthesis Report on Climate Action by Sector 2021,” by Climate Chance released on November 29, 2021.

According to the report, the pandemic has had an even greater impact on car sales. The automobile market was already shrinking, with global sales successively dropping by 2.9% and 6.3% in 2018 and 2019, despite an upswing in some regions (+1% in Europe in 2019).

In 2020, the global downturn exceeded 15% and affected all of the leading markets (-21% in Europe, -28% in the United States and -6% in China).

Despite these record drops, electric vehicles (EV) performed well: sales reached a new record and the global fleet topped 10 million vehicles. The 2020 Sector-based Report already pointed to encouraging sales of electric vehicles, up by 42% in the first half of 2020 in Europe.

This trend was strongly confirmed with an increase of 137% over the whole of 2020 in the European market.

For the first time since 2015, sales in Europe (1,417,880 units) were even higher than in China (1,160,764 units).

The EV market share rose sharply from 3.2% in 2019 to 10% in 2020, while it grew from 4.8% to 5.7% in China during the same period.

In the space of one year, the Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) market share more than doubled in Europe, from 3.5% in the second quarter of 2020 to 7.5% in 2021.

Sales of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) did even better, with 8.4% of the market, representing over half of the sales of all electric vehicles.

In the United States, sales are taking off slowly (only 10% of global sales), and EVs only represent 2% of the US markets.

The report adds that while these signs are encouraging, EVs still only represent a small share of the world’s automobile fleet: only 0.9% of the vehicles circulating in the world are electric, compared to 0.7% in 2019.

The results are only slightly better in the leading markets of China and Europe (1.7% and 1.1% respectively).

The transport sector is therefore still highly dependent on fossil fuels: all modes of transport combined represent 60% of oil demand, and 97% of the energy used by transportation is of fossil origin.

In its road map entitled Net Zero by 2050, the trajectory promoted by the IEA to reach carbon neutrality in the sector is based on a rapid switch to electric mobility: that is, by 2030, over 60% of new car sales will need to be those of electric vehicles compared to under 5% in 2020.

The report states that the penetration of electric vehicles was boosted by national recovery plans, stricter local regulations, and manufacturers’ decarbonization programmes.

 

International funding for cleaner transportation

In November 2021, after COP26, the United Kingdom committed to support Lagos and other cities in Africa, Latin America and Asia that are impacted by climate change to accelerate their transition to net zero.

The support came in form of a new Urban Climate Action programme (UCAP) by the UK government that is backed with £27.5 million of UK government funding as part of the UK’s International Climate Finance commitment.

Over 1,000 cities and regions across the world have committed to slashing their emissions to net zero by 2050 and Lagos is one of them.

In the announcement, UK’s Deputy High Commissioner in Lagos, Ben Llewellyn-Jones said: “The population of Lagos is projected to double by 2050, and the speed and scale of urbanisation may lock in high-carbon infrastructure and inequality if we do not act now.”

In his response, and recognising the urgency to tackle climate change by quickly reducing Carbon Dioxide emissions, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu on behalf of Lagos State had signed up to the Zero Emission Vehicles Joint Statement.

He said: “Lagos State considers Net Zero an imperative and commits to converting public transport vehicles to electric as well as embracing solar and other clean energy sources. We must go faster.”

 

Private sector involvement in electric vehicles

There has been immense interest in the electric vehicles space in Nigeria from the private sector.

Metro Africa Express (MAX) is a technology company in Lagos providing mobility solutions in six cities in Nigeria. Their latest venture, after motorcycle ride-hailing and hire purchase of two- and three-wheelers, is electric vehicle assembly.

Last year, MAX received support from by way of funding Manufacturing Africa.

Manufacturing Africa is a programme supported by the UK government that seeks to promote industrialisation in East and West Africa by attracting £1 billion in foreign direct investment and create 90,000 jobs by 2026.

With this, MAX hopes to lead the transition to sustainable and environmental-friendly mobility through the deployment of electric vehicles, charging infrastructure, and batteries across the board to support the transition.

From an assembly plant in Ibadan, MAX co-founder, Adetayo Bamiduro, notes that the company will pilot the assembly of two and three-wheeler EVs for use by their drivers and plans to deploy 24,000 EVs across its markets in the next three years.

 

‘EVs should not be the only alternative’

Dr Ademola Dare, a mechanical engineering expert, and Head of Biomedical Engineering Department at the University of Ibadan, said that with Nigeria still grappling with the absence of constant electricity supply and charging stations, Nigeria is not ripe for the use of electric vehicles.

He argued that “electric vehicles are only for light use. You can’t use it when talking about trailers and other long haulage purposes. So we can’t close the door on fossil fuels.”

Nigeria’s economic mainstay is oil and gas. Therefore, Dr Dare argued further that: “It is like putting the cart before the horse. I would expect that we have stable power supply first before dabbling into electric vehicles.

“We don’t need to bring every technology to Nigeria. We should adopt technology that we can sustain.

“We should not close the door on fossil fuels. The argument is that with fossil fuels we have carbon emissions. We can find a way in which fossil fuels will not harm the environment. There is research going on on that.

“Instead of CO2 going into the atmosphere from a vehicle, it can be stored and perhaps processed.

“We are a fossil fuel rich nation. We should not do anything that will hurt our area of strength. Instead we should be thinking of alternatives that will not hurt our economy.”

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