Tinubu approves e-vehicles for North-East

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Tinubu approves e-vehicles for North-East

President Bola Tinubu has authorized the North East Development Commission (NEDC) to deploy electric vehicles in place of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) vehicles in the region.

Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the North East Development Commission (NEDC), Mohammed Alkali, disclosed this to State House correspondents on Wednesday after the commission presented to the President on how to make electric vehicles functional and effective in the region.

The MD explained that the commission opted for electric vehicles instead of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) vehicles because the region lacks gas resources.

He stated, “We are here today (Wednesday) to brief Mr. President on a very critical activity he has approved, which we have been engaging in over the last two months.

“As you may recall, there’s a directive from the President that vehicles should use CNG or electric power as soon as possible. We at the Northeast Development Commission conducted a thorough analysis of our region, which covers six states in the Northeast, and evaluated the comparative advantages of CNG versus electric vehicles.

“After our analysis, we concluded that while CNG could work in the region, electric vehicles would be more effective for several reasons.

“One reason is that our plan ultimately includes creating modular solar power units across the states to power a portion of these electric vehicles.

“On that note, we have earlier sought and received approval from the presidency to proceed with developing the framework for deploying e-mobility in the Northeast, including the types of e-mobility solutions.”

“And Mr. President graciously approved, and today we came to present to him the kind of E-vehicles we are going to introduce in the Northeast.”

He further disclosed that the e-vehicles which will be using power are in three categories.

He said, “There are three categories. One is the E-buses, which can carry about 40 people or passengers at a given point in time, at the minimum, and that’s for intrastate, not interstate. Also, we brought some samples of e-taxis which normally carry three people passengers as well as the driver, and we also brought in a highly modified tricycle.

“Most of the tricycles we have in the North East or elsewhere only carry three people plus the driver four, but in our case, we have modified it to carry eight people plus the driver, and it’s fully covered and very convenient, and we are also, knowing the kind of weight and people we are going to carry, we’ve asked our engineers to modify the physical structure of the tricycle. when you look at it, you can see the tyres are bigger, the prime is bigger, and so so forth.

“And also, in doing that, we consider local content that the body can be fabricated locally in the North East or somewhere else in the region.

“So today we made a presentation to the President. And delightfully, the chairman is here and Mr. President approved that we should go ahead and deploy the e-mobility in the northeast region.”

Fielding a question on why the e-vehicles, Alkali said, “You know, I told you earlier that when we started the whole process, we have to engage ourselves in a very thorough analysis of what can work. Yes, there will be difficulties.

“For instance, if you talk about gas-powered CNG, the gas has to come from somewhere, because we don’t have gas in the north for now. But e-vehicle what you need is power. To power all e-facilities as part of the arrangement for us to establish very comprehensive composite charging facilities for all our e-vehicles.

“This already is part of the work plan, which we are trying to do. In addition, we’re also considering establishing five or 10 KVA solar-powered grids stand-alone, so that this can be back up for the inadequacy of the power supplies.

“So, we are aware of all these challenges. But sometimes with challenges come opportunities and when we start, yes, we may have one more, two, three challenges in terms of power bank, but we already made a plan to see that, besides the usual generating plant, we are also going to back up some solar power grids stand-alone to power this station, we are going to build.”

He further explained that in the past few years, the commission developed a comprehensive master plan which has been approved, adding that the master plan has 11 pillars that cover all the sectors of the economy, from education to agriculture to commerce and so and so forth.”

Proofreading by Uchechi Ojo, Sub-editor at Neptune Prime.

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