Archive for 'South Africa'
Jouled
Kobus Meiring, CEO of Optimal Energy, briefs the blogger on South Africa’s electric car. Kobus previously headed the project to build SALT, the Southern African Large Telescope, the largest telescope in the southern hemisphere and brought it in on time and under budget. Click below to listen in.
A Call From the Distant Past
Sometimes when I go to the ocean and stand at the edge of the water for awhile I can fell the pull of time. It’s not like that eerie feeling on the northwest edge of Goat Island at Niagara Falls, the sense that there’s a slight hand at your back suggesting….
The feeling at the ocean is a reminder that we came from there. Some serial entrepreneur fish decided one millennium to expand his target market by crawling onshore and here we are. So you look out at the eternal sea, the waves that keep landing whether or not we’re there to see them, and the sense that we came from there just fits.
Wake up 30 minutes before first light and wait for sunrise in a South African field and it’s the same. There is something about the air, the light and the stillness that is different from, say, the Rocky Mountains or Death Valley. It reminds me of those long scenes in the first part of Kubrick’s 2001, scenes in which the camera lingered much longer than we are used to in film, hinting at the passage of eons.
This sense of beginning has some basis. The San, or Bushmen, are by most accounts the oldest common ancestor of humans, and the tribes originated in what is now called Namibia, Botswana and South Africa. Our group visited a San/Bushman cultural center and have a trip scheduled later for what is considered the cradle of humankind, so more on them later.
For now, it’s worth noting that an early morning in a South African landscape has some of the same effect as the ocean, an unconscious postcard (“Wish You Were Still Here”?) from a place all of us once called home.
Moving Panoramic Shot of American Bloggers in Africa
We had an opportunity to hang out with the founder of Virtual Africa for a few days in Cape Town. After an amazing 360 panoramic view of Table Mountain and the surrounding Cape by helicopter, he took a shot of the American visiting bloggers, which also includes three South African bloggers in this amazing shot. We’ll cover them in depth in a later post.
360o picture of the participatingUS and South African bloggers, courtesy of Virtual Africa. Full screen version.
Cape Town Helicopter Flight
We have a truly stunning country.
It helps to have an event remind you of that occasionally. That reminder came for me yesterday. I was immensely privileged to take a helicopter ride through, around, in between, over and about Cape Town yesterday.
It is definitely one of the most breath-taking and awe-inspiring things that I […]
The New Obama in South Africa
Helicopter Ride Over the Cape
Joule, the South African Electric Car
[Blogging Tour – South Africa 08] This morning we went to Optimal Energy in Cape Town to meet with CEO Kobus Meiring for a presentation of the South African electric car A.K.A. Joule. Presented last September at the Auto Show in Paris, this promising green vehicle got a lot of attention from the industry, but it will not hit the market until the end of 2010. The goal of Optimal Energy is to compete with the mainstream offering and not only with the other electric cars, that is the reason why it fits 6 passengers and has a 130 km per hour maximum speed. The company does not know which type of lithium battery it will use for the final product yet, and we did not see any drive test. If the final Joule is really as good as it is on the paper, we can expect a bright future for clean automotive. Features include: 200km to 400 km range, 0-100 km in 15 seconds, 0-50 km in 5 seconds, energy cost 4c* /km (compared to 80c/km with petrol, diesel). It will be priced around $22,000.
* This is the South African cent.
Africa joining the electric car craze, with Optimal Energy’s Joule
The entire world hopes to start driving electric cars soon, and Africa, despite its reputation for poor economies, is no exception. Luckily, a South African company called Optimal Energy is working to release a vehicle in 2010.
And unlike the many attempts to make electric cars as small and cheap as possible, the vehicle, called the Joule, will be a highway-speed, multi-passenger model aimed at the same people that buy full-priced four door vehicles, making it a good fit for Europe and the United States.
Optimal has the benefit of strong support from its government, which has put money into the company through a research investment fund. Having such backing gives Optimal the time to pay close attention to its engineering and design choices.
That has resulted in some some uncommon bonuses for buyers, like an optional solar panel integrated with the roof that will help charge the car, and varying seat designs — the standard model will have six seats, three front and three back, but North Americans would likely be more comfortable with four.
One interesting design choice affects both the physical car and its business model. The Joule will have an adjustable chassis that can fit a variety of battery types and sizes, so the company won’t be tied to using a particular technology. The battery will also be offered on a separate lease, to help ease the pain of simultaneously paying for the vehicle and, effectively, several years worth of fuel. Customers will also have the choice of paying for a smaller or cheaper battery to save money.
But even without the battery included in the price, the car won’t be cheap by local standards. While Optimal’s CEO, Kobus Meiring, isn’t ready to set a firm price yet, he says vehicles in the same class go for about 220,000 South African Rand, about $22,000 dollars. Compare that to the Tata Nano, sold in the same market. The Nano’s lowest price is around $2,200 – and it is still far out of reach for the poorest South African families.
That leaves plenty of potential buyers, but focusing only on the local market would be a mistake, says Meiring. “You really have to be a global player,” he says. “There isn’t a manufacturer in the world that remains successful by staying only in its own country.”
So far, the company has completed much of the design, and recently showed off the vehicle at a popular Paris auto show. It was well received, according to Meiring. That’s not a hard claim to believe; up close, the prototype model comes across as sleek and modern, and the car is supposed to have a robust range of almost 250 miles, and top speed of about 80 miles per hour.
While Optimal is also working on a three seat design and a truck, the Joule is furthest along, and the company is bulking up rapidly to reach production. It currently has 79 employees, primarily engineers, and is planning to open a manufacturing facility near its headquarters in Cape Town, or in another South African city.
What the company still needs is money, although perhaps less than companies based in countries with more expensive labor. It also needs international partners to begin selling the car, once it’s in production. Meiring says he’d be interested in forming partnerships similar to the one Think, a Norwegian electric car maker, set up with two American venture capital firms.
With any luck, the pieces will all fall into place — it’s not hard to imagine a Joule parked in an American driveway.
Same Information, Different Representation
Where to go when you get to ! Khwa ttu, the San Culture and Education Centre near Darling. Beautiful and fascinating place, incidentally, on which more posts coming.
360degree bloggers
Our first proper day of excursions kicked off today with a helicopter tour of Cape Town. What an absolutely stunning city CT is. I wont go in to that too much because this post is purely going to show you all the bloggers on the tour with me and the links to their respective projects […]
