“You can charge it anywhere,” Osinbajo says after test-driving locally assembled electric car

The poor state of electricity has made the push for electric cars a hard sell in a nation still battling to provide electricity to power homes.

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on Tuesday test-drove a locally assembled  electric car, Hyundai Kona, in Abuja. He described the experience as “fantastic”, adding that owners “can literally charge it anywhere.”

Mr Osinbajo drove the car while on an exhibition tour of made-in-Nigeria products at the opening ceremony of a 5-day Nigeria @ 60 Expo being held at the Eagle Square, Abuja.

The event is organised  by the Inter-ministerial Committee on Nigeria @ 60 in collaboration with Business Visa and Training Co Ltd.

Speaking with the newsmen afterwards, Osinbajo expressed excitement at the innovation and said he was hopeful of a bright future for Nigeria.

“A very good drive; fantastic; it just shows what is possible.

“I am glad to see that this is an assembled-in-Nigeria electric car.

“You can literally charge it anywhere; I think it is a very fantastic innovation; fantastic product, and I can tell because I drove it,” he said.

Like the world over, auto dealers have continued to push for the incursion of electric cars into the Nigerian market. Yet, the poor state of electricity has made the push a hard sell in a nation battling to provide electricity to power homes, less so industrial activities.

Currently, many parts of the country are experiencing extended outages as power generation has dropped drastically.

The Transmission Company of Nigeria attributed the collapse of the national grid in May to voltage collapse at the Shiroro power plant, assuring that engineers were already working to fix the problems.

Nonetheless, power supply has remained poor since then.

This article originally appeared in People Gazette