Ai - Toyota is nowhere in the EV space. Hybrids are a technological dead-end. We need some real EV production in South Africa, and soon otherwise our industry is dead. We can't wait until EV's are ubiquitous before we do the switch, because other countries head-start would mean we can't compete. Especially with factories going bigger - soon new factories will the size where in most cases one factory produces as much cars as our entire local production across manufacturers put together*. We are only responsible for 0.4% of global car production -- which is a rounding error. Car OEMs can drop us easily without any impact on them.
And EV's need less parts. So we need to grab a much bigger share of the slice just to keep the secondary industry supplying components to maintain their current revenue and workforce. With so much cost concentrated in the battery, I would think that if we don't have cell and battery pack manufacturing on SA soil our industry would shrink like crazy.
This Toyota thing might be fine in the short-term but without radical ideas, investments and plans our industry will be in the toilet within 15 years.
* Stats on some factory sizes company to our entire industry:
South Africa 2020 production: 238,216 cars
Hyundai:
Ulsan - 1.4 million vehicles/year
Assan - 300,000 vehicles/year
GGM - 70,000 vehicles/year
Alabama - 370,000 vehicles/year
Brasil - 180,000 vehicles/year
Czech - 350,000 vehicles/year
Tesla (only factories in production):
California - 600,000/year
China - 450,000/year
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