Dubai: “By next year, you’ll be able to travel anywhere in the GCC with an electric vehicle.”
South African-born Elon Musk, tech pioneer and Martian colonist in the making, in Dubai for the World Government Summit as well as the local launch of his car company, normally says what he means.
This is a man who at the turn of the year offhandedly tweeted about underground tunnels solving the issue of his congested Californian commute, and then went and founded The Boring Company and began digging test trenches within a month.
This is a man who didn’t like the internet economy, so he founded PayPal. He wanted to go to space. So he founded SpaceX. He wanted to make a zero-emissions electric vehicle (EV). So he made one.
Tesla is now officially in the UAE, launching with a pop-up store at The Dubai Mall and a service centre off Shaikh Zayed Road, with plans for additional locations in Abu Dhabi next year.
The company uniquely bypasses the traditional dealership network by selling its cars through its website only which already includes a UAE version where customers can specify vehicles starting from Dh275,000.
Earlier, enthusiasts of zero-emissions and silent motoring had to rely on grey imports with no manufacturer support. Electric vehicles have largely been a novelty in petrol-dependent UAE so far, with few manufacturers offering zero-emissions models, Renault and the French marque’s little Zoe runabout being just about the only exception. Electric vehicle owners in the region additionally face difficulties over their transportation choice.
Grey-import Tesla owner and Emirati businessman Fares Al Mazroui, 34, imported one of the first Tesla models (in fact, production number 86…) into the country way back in 2008, for example, and ran into a headache straight off the boat.
“I went to customs and they couldn’t register it as a Tesla, so they just put it as a Lotus,” said Al Mazroui. However, officials moved quickly and a week later Tesla was added to Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) manufacturer database.
Changing landscape
Now that the automotive landscape of the region is starting to change, however slightly, the government is acting to support manufacturers like Tesla and the shift across the automotive industry towards electrification.
Giants are betting everything and the dog on zero-emissions motoring. Ford set aside $4.5 billion (Dh16.5 billion) with a commitment of 13 EVs in the Detroit firm’s line-up by 2020. After Volkswagen’s recent diesel emissions-cheating scandal, the Wolfsburg company’s focus has shifted away from the clatter of internal combustion to a heavy focus on batteries and softly whirring motors. The world’s biggest automobile market, China, wants five million EVs on the roads by 2023. If you thought Ford was being ambitious, or Mercedes with its just-announced EQ sub-brand and the 10 vehicles planned by 2017, the Wolfsburgers are shooting for no less than 30 all-new EVs due over the next 10 years.
The trend continues at the upper end of the price spectrum, in the premium and ultra-luxury segments so strong in the UAE, when you consider exclusive boutique marques such as Rolls-Royce and Aston Martin, with histories soaked in petrol, are also busy developing their own EVs.
All those cars, all those batteries… They’ll need charging.
Of course, compared to the security of a tank full of Super and the range provided by petrol (which is actually quite energy-efficient for its density), electric car drivers suffer from range anxiety. A litre of petrol provides enough energy to charge a smartphone for five years. Now just try and imagine the size of the battery you’d need to run an iPhone continuously for five years…
Lithium-ion batteries still don’t last very long and electric cars generally offer less range on a full charge compared to a conventional petrol-powered car (a Tesla will do over 400km fully juiced). In extreme temperatures the range drops further, although Tesla tests its vehicles for durability in California’s Death Valley where the world’s hottest temperature of nearly 57°C was recorded about a hundred years ago.
To support the arrival of EVs in the UAE, however, Musk is committed to improving the nation’s electric infrastructure: in addition to the 26 existing Tesla chargers already available across the country, the company is adding 50 additional chargers by the end of the year, with a total of seven Supercharger locations also on the cards enabling cross-country travel.
Charging an electric vehicle like a Tesla typically takes hours using a conventional socket, although Tesla’s free-to-use Superchargers provide a range of 270km in about half an hour.
It’s a small step towards electrification of the region, where consumers currently do not enjoy financial government incentives on EVs nor lower road toll charges or registration and insurance. In Europe and the US, for example, EV buyers get thousands of dollars off the car’s list price, enjoy free parking in city centres and waived road toll fees, and even dedicated EV highway lanes.
The UAE government though is moving along with the automotive industry. On Monday, the RTA signed a deal with Musk to acquire 200 Teslas, equipped with the carmaker’s self-driving technology that promises safety levels greater than that of a human driver, adding the vehicles to Dubai’s taxi fleet.
Speaking at the World Government Summit, Mattar Al Tayer, Director-General and Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors of RTA, said the Dubai Smart Autonomous Mobility Strategy aims to transform the city’s road-scape with 25 per cent of all car journeys made by 2030 being of the electric, driverless variety.
Perhaps it’s time to get used to a motoring life of no oil changes, no service schedules, hardly any perishable moving parts, instant maximum torque available right off the line, and of course the savings made at the pumps. And perhaps we should heed Musk’s words up there even though next year always comes around quick.
It took us a while, but here we are 180 years after Scottish inventor Robert Anderson invented the thing, at the dawn of the electric car.
In numbers
• 90 per cent of car accidents are caused by human error.
• EV manufacturers and self-driving proponents like Nissan estimate that autonomy would ensure over 50 per cent less accidents.
• The possibility of hit-and-runs would be drastically lowered in electric, autonomous cars that automatically alert authorities in case of accidents.
• According to the World Health Organisation, car accidents alone can reduce a country’s GDP by up to 2 per cent.
• Half the population reckons that the biggest advantage of electric, autonomous vehicles is the possibility of accomplishing other tasks during morning and afternoon commutes
• An average daily commute for Americans and Europeans is no more than 50km, which means most available electric vehicles will suffice without range anxiety kicking in.
• Local authorities need to provide incentives for consumers to swap their petrol-powered cars for electric cars.
• A favourable environment for EVs is missing in the UAE, but growing, as Tesla’s and RTA’s commitments suggest above.
