President Bola Tinubu has approved the deployment of e-vehicles in the northeast region as a way to reduce transportation costs and ease mobility in the area.
The approval came on Wednesday when he received the leadership of the Northeast Development Commission NEDC, led by Mohammed Alkali, the commission’s CEO/Managing Director at Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Briefing correspondents after the meeting the president, Alkali said the Commission did a thorough analysis of the comparative advantage of compressed natural gas-powered vehicles in the region.
He said it therefore concluded that it was imperative to deploy e-vehicles across the six states of the region.
The MD/CEO of NEDC hinted that the Commission as part of its plans intends to create modular solar power units across the states.
This, he emphasised would serve as a standby power source for the e-vehicles in case of electricity power outage.
He added: “In addition, we’re also considering establishing five KVA or 10 KVA solar-powered grid, stand-alone so that this can be a backup for the inadequacy of the power supplies.
“So, we’re aware of all these challenges, but sometimes with challenges come opportunities.
“When we start, yes, we may have one or two challenges, but we already made a plan to see that besides the usual generating plant, we are also going to back up with some stand-alone solar power grid to power this station we are going to build.”
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