The El Nasr Automotive Manufacturing Company has begun deploying “E70” model electric cars on the streets for testing purposes in cooperation with “Uber”, the Ministry of the Public Business Sector announced Sunday.
The statement said that this comes within preliminary steps to start manufacturing its first locally-produced electric car. The tests ultimately aim to determine the final specifications of the vehicle, which will be produced locally at Nasr automobile company.
The Nasr automobile company imported 13 cars from the Chinese Dongfeng Motor Corporation, through which cooperation is underway to produce this model in the Nasr company’s factories and test it across Egypt’s roads.
The trials includes nine cars being delivered to drivers via the Uber application, who were trained by a team from the Chinese company Dongfeng to use and charge electric cars.
The car will be tested according to specific criteria at a distance of up to 30,000 kilometers per car during a period between three to four months.
The production of Nasr’s E70 model is scheduled to start in the second half of 2022, with a capacity of 25,000 cars per year in one shift.
In December 2019, the ministry announced the deal it made with the Chinese company to build electric passenger cars on the production lines of Egypt’s Nasr company.
The project will revive the Nasr production lines, which have been suspended since 2009. Production capacity is expected to reach around 25,000 electric cars annually, within a few years.
Egypt has the second largest automotive market in Africa, and the 42nd largest in the world.
In recent years, the country has sought to revive its local automotive assembly market, including signing an MoU with Mercedez-Benz to develop an assembly factory in the Suez Canal Economic Zone.
The country has offered automotive companies a number of incentives to establish assembly factories in the country, including reducing or abolishing customs fees for imported parts and equipment.
