The eKamva electric minibus taxis will operate on Century City routes in Cape Town by October, says GoMetro founder and CEO Justin Coetzee.
This follows the October 2024 launch of South Africa’s first electric minibus taxi.
In an interview with Cape Talk’s Lester Kiewit, Coetzee said the first few routes will be tested later this year with different associations, targeting full electrification over the next three to four years.
According to the GoMetro CEO, since the e-taxi’s official announcement two years ago, work has been done on improving it to suit South African conditions, as well as engaging the Century City Property Owners’ Association, at their public transport interchange, to identify routes and operations that would be able to go electric first.
“We’ve identified the routes that we will start operating with about 15 associations that all use Century City to access and to provide access to more than 25 000 people who work, play and learn at Century City.
“We expect to have everything in place to test these vehicles on existing routes, which will be feasible. We’ll be testing these vehicles with different associations every couple of weeks, ordering and rolling out more vehicles over the next few years.”
The electric taxi project was launched by a partnership of companies and research institutions, led by GoMetro, a South African-founded B2B software-as-a-service fleet management company.
The partnership kicked off in 2023, to investigate and advance the feasibility of an electric minibus taxi in South African conditions by testing production vehicles in South Africa.
The project team, consisting of GoMetro, Powerfleet (formerly MiX Telematics), HSW, ACDC Dynamics and various entities within Stellenbosch University’s Faculty of Engineering, conducted rigorous and extensive testing in and around the town of Stellenbosch on existing taxi routes, using traditional minibus taxis.
Coetzee clarified that the electric taxis are not suitable for long-distance travel but can cover the morning and afternoon shifts with an average range of 180km to 220km.
All the taxis that GoMetro mapped and tracked at Century City over the last year would generally do up to 120km of range in the morning, with a three- to four-hour rest period after the morning rush, he noted. The same applies for the afternoon shift.
“The vehicle would be able to cover both the morning and afternoon shifts, even if they don’t start on a 100% charge.
“In the middle of the day, we have a range of fast chargers that will be able to get the vehicles charged within one hour. The idea is that the middle of the day, when the vehicles are parked and waiting for return roads, is the perfect opportunity for us to charge these vehicles. So eventually, at Century City, we can support all 120 vehicles over the midday off-peak to charge.”
Share
