Dozens of stories have been published in the Autos section in the past year urging officials and investors in Egypt to start considering hybrid and electric cars. Here comes Revolta Egypt, a company that decided to gamble, just like Click, later known as Vodafone, in the late 1990s when they were the first mobile network company in Egypt. Revolta is trying to make a similar move but in another platform. The company is starting a project to build 65 charging hubs in what will eventually be seven governorates across Egypt, providing a variety of fully electric cars that according to the company, suits the Egyptian climate and roads. Last month the company celebrated the opening of their first charging hub, in Wataniya Gardinya fuel station on the Cairo-Suez road. The celebration was attended by Minister of Industry Tarek Kabil and General Manager of Wataniya Petroleum Mahmoud Hamed. According to the company, LE65 million will be invested in the first phase of the plan to complete the 65 stations provided by the German company Schneider Electric. They will, so far, be located mainly in Cairo, Giza, Alexandria, Suez, Port Said as well as the North Coast, including the highways which connect them. There will be three types of stations: slow charging which will take up to five hours to fully charge a car, faster chargers which take up to 90 minutes for a full charge, and the fastest charger which takes 30 minutes. Revolta is also offering several models including Tesla Model X priced at LE2,625,000, Tesla Model S at LE2,150,000, Hyundai Ioniq for LE749,000 and two other Nissan vans in the LE700,000 range. The company also offers two years or a total of 60,000km free charging for customers who will buy cars from them. Sounds good but there are several questions before a customer takes such a crucial decision to buy such extraordinarily expensive electric cars. If, in a one in a million chance, it needs service, is there a Tesla service centre in Egypt to justify your millions worth of investment? Do you still need a second car with an internal combustion engine in your garage just in case? Will the electric cars be free of registration taxes like in the UK? Autos will be working on the answers. Up until at least half of the 65 stations are set up, Revolta should start paving the road a little bit more for the Egyptian consumer with collaboration from the government. Offering cheaper cars will also make the idea considerably better for the average consumer who might not have the enormous amount of money needed, in which case the idea won't take off with the company targeting the niche market.
