South Africa’s Changing Automotive Landscape – CleanTechnica

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The first time I ever visited South Africa was in the year 2008. Coming from a much smaller economy, Zimbabwe, the differences were startling. In general, the Zimbabwean auto sector was already being dominated by imports of used vehicles from Japan at that time. The situation was slightly different in the 1980s and 1990s and before when the Zimbabwean market was supplied mostly by locally assembled vehicles from Toyota, Mazda, Nissan, Peugeot etc. Used vehicle imports were also in the mix, mostly from South Africa. Hyundai and Daewoo vehicles also made their debut appearance in the 90s, mostly assembled in the eastern border town of Mutare. 

Back to 2008. While most of the vehicles you would see in Zimbabwe were mostly used vehicles from Japan, there were some official dealerships representing European automakers such as BMW and Mercedes, but these were quite small with the only Mercedes-Benz dealership being in the capital city Harare, and serving mostly VIP government fleets, private businesses, and some of the well-off individuals. In contrast, in South Africa, used vehicle imports are not allowed as the country has a strong manufacturing sector that supplies the local market as well as the export market. In addition to Toyota, VW, Ford, Mazda, Nissan, and Honda, etc., you would see a lot of Mercedes-Benz, VW, BMW, and Audi vehicles on the road in South Africa.

One thing that you could not miss when driving in Pretoria, Centurion, and especially in Sandton, South Africa, was the large number of big showrooms along some of the country’s iconic streets. I remember when we first drove along Rivonia Road, on William Nicol Drive (now known as Winnie Mandela Drive), and other roads in the area with my brother, we would marvel at all the large showrooms occupied by mostly European brands such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, Porsche, Ferrari, Bentley, and Rolls Royce, etc. A drive along these roads in 2025 tells a different story!

But before that, let’s take a look at how things progressed from 2008 to 2013. According to a report by Cars.co.za, in 2013 Toyota and VW still dominated the sales charts and remained the top in 2023. Ford, General Motors, Nissan,  Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and others made up the rest of the top 10 in 2013. In 2023, Ford, Nissan and Renault retained their top 10 status, and were joined by Hyundai, plus the Chinese brands Haval and Chery. Suzuki saw the biggest growth with sales growing 10x between 2013 and 2023.

2023 sales show Chinese brands such as Haval and Chery making serious inroads, while BMW and Mercedes-Benz were now missing from the July 2023 top 10. Back to Johannesburg’s iconic streets — in 2025, driving along Rivonia Road, and on William Nicol Drive (now known as Winnie Mandela Drive), and other roads around Lonehill, Fourways, Bryanston, Rivonia, and general Sandton area, you see more Omoda, Chery, Haval, and Jaecoo  dealerships. The Chinese have landed! All of this is anecdotal, of course, but let’s see if we can back it up with official sales figures. Let’s zone in on sales for July 2025, keeping it in July as we did for 2013 and 2023. 

Here are the top 15 vehicle automakers in South Africa in July 2025:

As we can see from the charts, Great Wall Motors and the Chery Group have increased their footprint, supporting our anecdotal analysis. Chery’s Omoda, Jeacoo, Jetour, and its own Chery-branded vehicles are now more prominent on South Africa’s roads. GWM is also more prominent with its Haval brand as well as its GWM pickups.  Toyota and Volkswagen still have top 3 positions, with Suzuki gatecrashing the party dominated by Toyota and VW for so long! The Suzuki brand has done really well over the past 5 years as consumers tighten their belts and switch to smaller engines. 

Top 10 Passenger Vehicle Companies in South Africa in July 2025. Chery Group here combines the sales of Chery-branded vehicles plus Omoda, Jeacoo, and Jetour.

Most of these sales are full ICE vehicles. For example, In the overall market, 515,712 vehicles were sold in South Africa in 2024. 1,257 BEVs were sold in South Africa in 2024, up 35% from 929 units sold in 2023. That means BEVs only had a market share of 0.24%. That’s still very low! With only 3,212 BEVs sold since 2018, it’s clear to see that sales of BEVs have been slow in South Africa compared to similar auto markets around the world. This is due to the limited variety of BEV models in the country, coupled with high import duties and taxes levied on electric vehicles. This means most of the vehicles available in the global market would end up being quite expensive compared to their equivalent ICE vehicles if they were introduced in South Africa. This price difference would be more prominent in the smaller vehicle segments, making it a bit challenging to sell those EVs to the wider customer base.

Taxes in South Africa are set at 18% for ICE imports vs. 25% for EV imports. There is also the ad valorem tax for EVs, which pushes the cost of an EV to more than 2× that of the average price of a new ICE vehicle of a similar make/model in most cases. This is probably why the majority of EV models in South Africa are premium models where EV pricing is more competitive than in the smaller vehicle segment. Then again, people who buy $100,000 cars probably aren’t too worried about an extra $10,000 — maybe that’s the key point. But that should change soon as more affordable plug-in vehicles start to arrive in South Africa.

There seems to be a growing number of plug-in hybrids with electric ranges above 100km that are now being offered in South Africa by these Chinese manufacturers. Chery appears to be leading this transition, offering plug-in hybrids at reasonable prices, and the South African market seems to be responding well to this. Will this lead to an overall acceleration of the rate of adoption of plug-ins in South Africa? Time will tell. Look out for the followup article to this later this week when we look at the state of South Africa’s PHEV market.