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Joule II
| Date: |
01 November 2009 07:00 |
| Producer: |
Michael Duffett
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| Presenter: |
Annika Larsen
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| Researcher: |
Amalia Christoforou
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| Show: | Carte Blanche |
In the not too distant future, it is goodbye to noise and air pollution [on our roads]. And with the growing focus on climate change and renewable energy, big brand car manufacturers are charging full-steam ahead to develop and mass manufacture electric cars.
The electric Mini is soon to be released. High performance but very expensive and exotic electric cars are turning heads.
Annika Larsen (Carte Blanche presenter): 'The rush is on to get a relatively cheap and viable electric car on the road for you and me to drive. Now several makes and models have been exhibited at car shows around the world, but here in Cape Town it's a work in progress to get South Africa's first electric car, the Joule, into production by 2012.'
Kobus Meiring heads up Optimal Energy, the company that has conceptualised and is building South Africa's very first electric car.
Annika: 'At what stage are you now in the development of the car?'
Kobus Meiring (CEO: Optimal Energy): 'We are planning to have a small marketing fleet on the road next year June 2010 and then the full-size production starts at the end of 2012.'
Annika: 'It has been a year since we brought you our first story about the Joule. What progress has been made so far?'
In that story, we introduced you to the Optimal Energy team and we also spoke to South African born and ex-Jaguar designer, Keith Helford, who was brought in to shape the Joule.
[Carte Blanche 05 October 2008] Keith Helfet (Automotive designer): 'Jaguars were bought for emotional reasons - they were desirable. People, sometimes against their better judgment, wanted one and then would buy things. So with this project I wanted to try and sort of extrapolate from where I'd come from.'
And judging from the response that the Joule received at last year's Paris Motor Show, it seems that Optimal Energy and Keith Helford are on the right track.
Kobus: 'I myself was a little apprehensible because there [Paris Motor Show] you go, you put a show on a hundred square meters and the big guys are there on 5000 square meters. But the response was amazing. I think if we had 5000 cars there to sell we'd have sold them straight away.'
Since our first story, Optimal Energy has grown dramatically and doubled in size at its trendy offices in The Palms in Woodstock, Cape Town.
Now there is a staff compliment of over a hundred and the headquarters are crawling with some of the country's top engineers.
It is all systems go to get the car into production by late 2012, and believe it or not, this is the Joule prototype and we were invited to drive it.
Annika: 'Kobus, tell us about the pandas. Why have you got pandas on your car?'
Kobus: 'Well, you need to camouflage a test car so people don't recognize [it] and when we thought about how to camouflage it - pandas, the WWF, that whole connection to nature and so on was just, sort of, the logical thing.'
Annika: 'And everything has been tested, we are going to be safe?'
Kobus: 'It is an engineering prototype. It is not a marketing car. It is very much a work in progress, but everything is going to be safe.'
Immediately you are struck by the silence of the drive.
Kobus: 'This is, I think, an historic occasion because this is the first time I think we've had the media in this car. And this is really a test car.'
The smoothness of the drive was impressive. The acceleration was great. It was a good feeling being the first journalist to experience the Joule.
Annika: 'It was great.'
Some facts about the Joule:
At today's prices the entry level Joule will cost about R220000. That falls within the B and C of car categories.
Top speed of 135 kilometres.
The Joule can be driven for 400 kilometres before having to recharge batteries. The battery charge will take seven hours using normal household power supplies. There will be a warning system to let you know how much power you have left, but forget to charge your Joule overnight and you are literally stuck. So we need to be disciplined. But the good news is that it is 19 times cheaper to do one kilometre in a Joule than in a similar combustion vehicle.
Kobus: 'So Annika, would you like to take it for a drive?'
Annika: 'Do you trust me?'
Kobus: 'Oh, absolutely.'
Annika: 'Behind the wheel of your 'baby'?'
Kobus: 'Yeah, sure.'
Annika: 'Okay, let's go for it.'
I am glad that Kobus had trust in me, but I must admit that I was quite nervous.
[Driving] Annika: 'It feels like a great drive. I don't feel nearly as nervous as I thought I would.'
The handling felt very good, and out on the open road I felt perfectly comfortably around petrol engine cars. And it was raining, but we didn't get a shock!
Annika: 'We all survived my driving.'
Annika: 'It is like a normal car.'
Annika: 'It is a tremendously exciting prospect of South Africa having its very own home-grown electric car. But there are a lot of questions too. Who is going to partner with Optimal Energy to the tune of R5-billion? And will the car be able to compete with manufactures here and abroad? Well, there are sceptics who say it is going to end up a very costly white elephant.'
Motoring journalist Rob Hanfield-Jones questions whether the Joule will stand up to the established brands. Optimal Energy's goal is to sell 40 000 cars a year, most of them overseas.
Rob Hanfield-Jones (Motoring journalist): 'If we have a look at the potential competition that could come from manufacturers like Mitsubishi and Volvo, to sell 40 000 vehicles into an overseas market against the power of those brands it going to be very difficult.'
Diana Blake, who heads up marketing at Optimal Energy, and who launched the highly successful Mini is South Africa, is not fazed by these concerns.
Annika: 'Why would somebody in Europe buy an unknown brand from South Africa?'
Diana Blake (Sales & Marketing Director: Optimal Energy): 'They [Europeans] are far more open and less brand loyal than we are. Europeans are definitely moving away from the more traditional brands and looking more at the more 'boutique' type [offering]. There's a whole evolution of boutique products; boutique cars, boutique everything that people are moving towards.'
Rob also has a concern that the Joule may not get a very high safety rating. Car manufacturers around the world spend billions to make sure that their cars get a five-star rating at EuroNCap based in Belgium.
Rob: 'My concern about the Joule from that point of view is that it is a 2007 design and the motor manufacturers that are already established really sweated bullets to get their cars up to that EuroNCap five-star standard. So the question is: 'Will our Joule, which was designed a few years back in isolation from the main stream of motor manufacturing, be able to achieve five stars?''
To make sure that the Joule meets European safety standards, Optimal Energy is making use of overseas design companies.
Kobus: 'We are using three, actually four, companies in Europe that does this sort of thing for all the big European OEMs and you basically tell them, four star, five star, whatever it is that you want this thing to be designed to and that's what they do. So we have no doubt that we'll reach the NCap rating that we want to.'
And where is the five to five-and-a-half-billion rand going to come from to get Joule's emerging from a production plant in late 2012? Optimal Energy says they have serious backers, both overseas and here. Rob queries if there are private backers.'
Rob: 'But if you think of the Joule as being South Africa's first modern day venture into car manufacturing, that's actually something to shout about, that is an achievement. My opinion would be that any investor who was involved with Joule, who was funding them, would want to shout it from the rafters and say, 'Hey, look what we've done!''
Kobus is tight-lipped about investors.
Annika: 'Who are the private investors?'
Kobus: 'We are speaking to a number of people at the same time and obviously until things are signed you're just not allowed to speak about these things, it's a confidential matter.'
We know that the Innovation Fund and Industrial Development Corporation have already contributed about R150-million towards the project.
Annika: 'What about the ailing motor industry? Shouldn't this money maybe be directed towards rescue packages rather than development of a new product?'
Geoffrey Qhena (CEO: Industrial Development Corporation of SA): 'I think our approach is two-pronged. One, we have to create new industries, support new products, support new ideas and at the same time being able to support the ailing ones. So we've got the ability to do both.'
Geoffrey Qhena says the government has earmarked R6.1-billion for the ailing South African Motor Industry. But he is excited about the Joule and he is considering increasing the IDC's investment in the project. Some of his staff have driven the Joule and he, unlike me, when he took the car for a spin, wasn't light on the - er - voltage.
[Driving] Geoffrey: 'It feels normal. I think it has got a little bit more power than I thought it would have.'
Geoffrey: 'I think this is indeed a great moment for South Africa.'
Kobus: 'Thank you very much.'
And South Africa can build the best cars in the world. Recently Mercedes Benz South Africa won phenomenal recognition by winning a top international award for building top quality cars, in this case, the C Class Mercedes in East London.
Joule will create over 10 000 jobs, so we hope those private investors will come forward. In the meantime, Diana Blake can't contain her excitement.
Diana: 'I think the combination of Joule as a product, because it is a superior product, it will be, the fact that it has a wonderful personality that people will fall in love with it wherever it goes, and the fact that we have a really committed and really strong and passionate team building the car is going to be what makes this car successful.'
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:While every attempt has been made to ensure this transcript or summary is accurate, Carte Blanche or its agents cannot be held liable for any claims arising out of inaccuracies caused by human error or electronic fault. This transcript was typed from a transcription recording unit and not from an original script, so due to the possibility of mishearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, errors cannot be ruled out.
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