South Africa’s Automotive Landscape Is Changing, And That Is A Good Thing

New Entrants Such as Omoda & Jaecoo Show that They Are Not Afraid to Introduce Plugins into the South African Market

The South African automotive industry is changing. As discussed yesterday, Toyota,Volkswagen, Ford, Mazda, Nissan, General Motors, Honda, Mercedes-Benz, Renault, BMW, and Audi were some of the traditional dominant brands in South Africa 20 years ago and before. Toyota and Volkswagen still dominate till today, and Suzuki has really grown its footprint in South Africa over the past 10 years. However, there are some exciting new players in town offering a wider variety of models at prices offering great value for consumers. In 2025, we are seeing more action in South Africa from the likes of Omoda, Jetour, Chery, Haval, and Jaecoo. Great Wall Motors (GWM) and Chery Holdings are ramping up their presence in South Africa and the vehicle sales charts show it. In July 2025, Chery was up to fourth place and GWM was in 7th place.

The good thing about the changing automotive landscape is that players like Chery and GWM are not afraid to bring in their plugin vehicles in a market where plugins have been very slow to take off. Let’s look at the PHEV sales in South Africa in 2024. 737 PHEVs were sold in 2024, up 100% from 368 units sold in 2023. However, PHEVs only made up 0.14% of total vehicle sales in South Africa in 2024. As far as the top selling PHEVs in South Africa, BMW’s X1 plugin hybrid topped the charts in 2024, selling 145 units. BMW took second place as well. The X3 registered 97 units in 2024. The plugin hybrid version of the BMW X3 is actually built in Pretoria, South Africa, which is a nice boost for South Africa’s assembly and manufacturing industry, which is dominated by ICE vehicle production. The other plugin hybrid vehicle that will be built in Pretoria is the Ford Ranger PHEV. BMW’s X5 was joint 3rd, along with the VolvoXC60, with both models registering 74 units. These were followed by BMW’s XM and Volvo’s XC90, which registered 64 units each.

Plugin hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) divide opinion all the time, as they have for years. A lot of people feel that with the way BEV tech has advanced in recent times, PHEVs are no longer needed as a transition option to full electric. However, as Dr. Maximilian Holland says, “BEVs pollute less than PHEVs, but the latter still have a critical role in certain niches where BEVs may not yet fully meet users’ needs. PHEVs (or EREVs) — when plugged in as designed — pollute a lot less than HEVs, which in turn pollute less than diesels!”

Now let us look at PHEV sales in South Africa for the first 6 months of 2025. In just 6 months, 788 PHEVs were sold in South Africa. That means more PHEVs were sold in H1 2025 in South Africa than in the whole of 2024. The introduction of new models from Chery, Omoda, Jaecoo, and Haval has played a huge part in this. Chery’s PHEVs made up 27% of all PHEVs sold in South Africa in H1 of 2025. BMW still leads the way with 48% of the PHEV market during that period. There is a growing number of plugin hybrids with electric ranges above 100 km 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. These offer consumers more value than the older generation PHEVs from some other markets that had electric ranges of less than 40 km in real driving conditions. A lot of people commute between Pretoria, Centurion, Midrand, and Johannesburg, and PHEVs with a real range of over 90km will offer great value. A lot of people now also have solar at home and charging these PHEVs with solar makes the value proposition financially stronger. 

Between January and June 2025, the BMW X3 PHEV topped the charts, selling 170 units. That’s more than the BMW X1 PHEV sold in all of 2024. The BMW X1 PHEV was in second place, selling 94 units in the first 6 months of the year, showing that BMW PHEV sales are still the leader in South Africa.  Now let’s look at the rest of the top 5. In joint third were the Chery Tigoo Pro 7 PHEV and the Jaecoo J7. Rounding out the top 5 was the Omoda C9 PHEV. Imagine that. Three of the top 5 PHEV models in South Africa are from the Chinese automakers. Adding the Haval H6 PHEV in joint 7th position with the BMW 5 Series PHEV shows again the Chinese automakers are really promoting PHEVs in South Africa more than the other traditional automakers, with BMW the only real legacy automaker pushing PHEVs hard in South Africa. Who would have predicted this? No traditional giants like Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, Renault, Honda, Mercedes-Benz, or General Motors in the top 10 of the vehicle category in South Africa? Things done changed for these traditional automakers in South Africa.

Let’s look at one of the big sellers in the overall market, pickups. Pickup trucks are a big deal in South Africa. The Toyota Hilux, the Ford Ranger, and the Isuzu D-Max usually feature prominently at the top of South Africa’s vehicle sales charts. The Toyota Hilux usually tops the annual sales charts. But with Toyota South Africa not looking like promoting PHEV pickups, PHEV sales charts for pickups may also not feature many traditional automakers soon. Some Chinese automakers are now starting to bring PHEV pickups instead. End-of-year sales data should give us an idea of how well PHEV pickups are doing in South Africa, as some of the models have only recently been introduced into the market.

We saw in markets such as China last year that PHEVs with longer electric mode range experienced significant increase in market share. As more of these “longer range PHEVs” enter more markets around the world, will we see a resurgence in PHEV sales? Especially in developing markets where charging infrastructure may not yet be fully developed. Could PHEVs re-establish their role as a transition option to full BEVs in such markets? PHEVs with electric ranges of 200–300 km would appeal to non-early adopters, especially in markets where charging infrastructure is not fully developed. Perhaps this is what some Chinese automakers are thinking, as quite a number of them are contributing to a new wave of new-generation PHEVs with battery packs of over 50 kWh and electric ranges of about 200 km — thereafter, complemented by a 1.5T or 2.0T ICE engine. In China and some other markets, PHEVs are now cheaper to buy compared to equivalent full ICE vehicles — from both an upfront purchase perspective as well as an operating or total cost of ownership (TCO) perspective. Are we now starting to see this trend coming to South Africa? Time will tell.