World's Cheapest Electric Car is in Ghana

The transition to electric vehicles is happening so fast, Africa can lead to the switch to electric cars. It is because a lot of African countries have low motorization rates, presenting a massive opportunity for another leapfrog event similar to the one seen with the mobile phone revolution.

Ora R1 is popularly known as a Black cat. It has a 33kWh battery pack and a 35 kW motor enabling a 220 km WLTP range. The small city EVs are finding their way in Africa. The Ora R1 is now available in Ghana! This is really exciting news as the availability of such a small affordable city EV lowers the barrier to adoption. This type of EV is also perfect for ride-sharing platforms.
Ghana is a good place to bring in EVs right now as the country faces an interesting electricity crisis. According to Ghana’s Energy and Demand Outlook 2020, by the end of 2019, she installed electricity generation capacity available for grid power supply in the country was about 5,000 megawatts (MW). The peak load, however, was around 2,612 MW. The interesting part is the portion of the total dependable grid capacity which was 4,580 MW in 2019 and was, therefore, more than the peak load by a whopping 1,968 MW.

Ghana is paying over US$500 million annually for power generation capacity that’s not being used. The 2019 National Household Electricity Access Rate was 82.5% according to Energy Commissions 2020 Statistics. The rate of electrification is high in Ghana compared to other African countries. Ghana stands a chance to benefit from the increased entry of electric vehicles because of a lot of developments available in the country.

Local startup SolarTaxi is assembling electric motorcycles and also leasing several electric SUVs and sedans. The 64 kWh Hyundai Kona is also now officially on sale in Ghana. Ora R1 is one of the EVs' entries in Ghana and hopefully the rest of Africa soon.