Eastern Cape Welcomes the NEV Road Trip 2025: Escaping the Noise 2.0

On Sunday, 28 September 2025, the Eastern Cape welcomed three convoys of the NEV Road Trip 2025: Escaping the Noise 2.0 led by naamsa | The Automotive Business Council, ahead of South Africa Auto Week 2025. Covering more than 4,000 kilometres from Johannesburg, Durban, and East London, the convoys brought together 20 new energy vehicles (NEVs) from nine OEMs, showcasing the country’s readiness for e-mobility transition while stress-testing its charging network.

For the Automotive Industry Development Centre Eastern Cape (AIDC-EC), the arrival of the convoys was more than symbolic. It was a strategic moment of alignment, placing the province’s growing EV infrastructure within the national conversation on adoption, competitiveness, and industrial readiness.

Welcoming delegates, the AIDC-EC CEO, Mr Thabo Shenxane, reflected on the significance of South Africa’s decision to bring SA Auto Week to the province.

“We have been lobbying for years to ensure that global and national automotive conversations come to the Eastern Cape. Hosting both NAACAM and now SA Auto Week is not a coincidence - it is recognition that this province is central to South Africa’s automotive future,” said Shenxane.

His remarks went further, weaving provincial action into a national framework of industrial strategy. He emphasised that the Eastern Cape’s government-funded charging network was not an end in itself but a pilot of what national infrastructure could look like.

 “We knew that in a rural province like ours, private sector investment in charging infrastructure would take years. So, we decided to lead, to build first, and to demonstrate what is possible. Today, those lessons are not only for the Eastern Cape, but for South Africa as a whole. We must use these experiences - from our own Electric Vehicle Road Trip in May earlier this year and now this NEV Road Trip to inform the type of infrastructure required across the country.”

By positioning the Eastern Cape as a laboratory of transition, the CEO highlighted how insights gained locally could shape South Africa’s competitiveness globally.

“These road trips are not just about driving cars - they are about testing systems, about understanding adoption realities, and about designing an inclusive rollout of infrastructure. The conversations cannot stop at kilometres travelled. They must guide the national investment choices we make in the next decade if South Africa is to remain an automotive powerhouse.”

Echoing this, Chief Policy Officer from naamsa, Tshetle Litheko, reminded delegates that adoption follows a sharp curve.

“Global evidence shows that once a market passes the 5% NEV sales mark, adoption accelerates dramatically just as we saw with mobile phones. South Africa is not immune to that curve. Once we cross it, adoption will scale rapidly.”

This insight reinforces why early infrastructure investment is critical. Without readiness, South Africa risks being outpaced by global competitors.

As South Africa pushes toward a just transition, the Eastern Cape is showing what it means to merge heritage with innovation, rural with industrial, provincial with national.

 The AIDC-EC’s role in hosting, calibrating, and learning from live road trips places it at the centre of the country’s EV readiness journey.

By elevating infrastructure from provincial showcase to national blueprint, AIDC-EC is ensuring that the lessons picked up in the province ripple outward  influencing policy, de-risking private investment, and demonstrating that South Africa is capable of shaping its own mobility future.

 The message from the Eastern Cape was clear: the future of mobility is not only electric; it is strategic, inclusive, and already being written here in the Home of Legends.