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Daily Maverick
a day ago
- Automotive
- Daily Maverick
Hermanus teen's solar app powers a win at electric vehicle showcase
Connor Lewis, a pupil from Curro Hermanus, has built an app that calculates the exact wattage of solar panels needed to charge an electric vehicle. At EV Now's EVs on Display showcase in Hermanus, a glossy lineup that included a Tesla and a Powerade-blue electric G-Wagon drew plenty of stares. But the most impressive piece of engineering came from a 17-year-old who, in two hours, built an app that could help South Africans figure out exactly how to power their electric cars through solar energy. The event itself was organised as an electric vehicle showcase – a chance for the public to touch, prod and test-drive without the usual sales patter. The most meaningful component was a competition launched among high school pupils four months earlier, aimed at myth-busting EVs and giving young brains the space to design something genuinely useful. Seven of the eight high schools in the Overstrand area signed up, tackling categories such as essays, infographics and app building. In the end, one entry stood out: a working piece of software that could have easily come from a professional developer's desk. The two hour build Connor Lewis from Curro Hermanus took the crown with an app that calculates the exact wattage of solar panels needed to charge an electric vehicle. The app pulls data from your home solar system (maximum output in kilowatts), factors in your location for both real-time and average weather conditions, and matches that against your vehicle's battery specs. If your EV isn't on the preloaded list, you can add it manually. The result is a real-time calculation of how fast you can charge and how long it will take, under average conditions. Lewis didn't lean on AI, existing templates or a friendly adult with a coding background. 'I wrote it in two hours,' he said, in the same tone someone might use to describe making a sandwich. 'I've been coding and tinkering with code for many years now,' he said. 'Very basic in Grade 5, and then at the start of high school around Grade 8, I started getting into proper programming languages like Java and Python.' Hermanus mayor Archie Klaas handed Lewis his prize – a R10,000 electric scooter – at a special ceremony during the showcase. The mayor pointed out that the EV shift will be led by the young people of today. 'Younger generations naturally embrace such changes,' he said. 'I think there's a lot of potential for EVs,' Lewis said. 'Currently, the biggest issue is the infrastructure that charges them, as well as battery density. If we can sort those two problems out, then EVs are definitely the future.' EV momentum in the Western Cape It would be easy to treat this as a charming local-boy-done-good story and move on. But Connor's app is a microcosm of the type of innovation South Africa will need if it wants to make EVs mainstream rather than a niche hobby for the wealthy. The Western Cape is establishing itself as the country's EV leader. Golden Arrow Bus Service has begun rolling out 120 electric buses, 20 of which are already in service, following a successful pilot. 'In the public transport sector, the shift to electric vehicles is critical to achieving sustainable mobility for commuters and creating economic opportunities and job creation in various sectors of the province,' said Isaac Sileku, the Western Cape minister of mobility. Government motor transport is adding hybrids and battery electrics to its fleet, aiming for 2.5% new energy vehicles this year. Charging infrastructure is sprouting across the province, albeit slowly, with 55 stations, 18 of them DC fast chargers. Yet, for all the planning and roadmaps, the gap between policy and personal adoption is still wide. This is where projects like Connor's come in – tools that empower people to make more sense of EV ownership. What this means for you Instead of guessing whether your solar setup can handle an EV, apps like Connor's can give you hard numbers before you spend a cent; The next wave of practical EV solutions may not come from big corporations but from small-scale problem solvers; As tools like this make EV ownership less intimidating, the move away from petrol and diesel becomes more realistic for households; and Every coder, technician and designer working on EV tech strengthens South Africa's green economy. A glimpse of the future What makes Connor's win notable isn't just that he beat out dozens of other entries or that he wrote the app in less time than a Sanral meeting takes. It's that he created a functional bridge between two of the country's most urgent realities: a rapidly warming climate and a creaking, unreliable grid. A 2015 study by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research predicted that by 2050 nearly half of Cape Town's vehicles could be electric. If that happens, the demand for home charging solutions will skyrocket. 'Billions of rands leave South Africa to buy fuel, to buy oil and to find fuel from countries like Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. We feel that we want to keep that money in South Africa, so that there is more money to go around. Despite Eskom, which is one of our biggest polluters, it's still cleaner to drive an EV than to drive a petrol diesel car,' Justus Visagie, EVs on Display co-organiser, said. Gerrit Kruiswijk, the other organiser of the showcase, said that targeting young people matters. 'With South Africa, in the very early stages of electric vehicle adoption, it is so important that we start educating the youth. They are going to make future decisions on buying vehicles, not only for themselves, but for their parents and your grandparents,' he said. Kruiswijk believes that Hermanus itself could become a model for EV-led transport. With traffic jams choking the town during tourist season, the vision includes electric buses and shuttles, taking inspiration from Oslo's clean transit systems, to turn the town into a pioneer in South African EV adoption. DM
Daily Maverick
06-08-2025
- Daily Maverick
Cape Town's taxi sector commits to new chapter that ‘cannot be written in blood'
Extortion, disputes over routes, and the infiltration by criminal syndicates using the taxi industry to launder money pose serious threats to an industry that generates billions of rands. The minibus taxi sector in Cape Town has long been marred by issues of violence, extortion and illegality as operators vie for a slice of the industry, estimated to be worth R5-billion to R7-billion in the Western Cape. Taxi violence started in the region during the 1990s, with taxi operators targeting the Golden Arrow Bus Service. Since then, the bodies have continued to pile up. On Monday, 4 August, South African National Taxi Council (Santaco) Western Cape chairperson Mandla Hermanus stated: 'We need to write a new chapter and it cannot be written in blood.' He was speaking at Santaco's Peace Summit in Cape Town, which brought together stakeholders to address the challenges undermining the taxi industry. One message that came through strongly from taxi operators and owners, religious leaders, the City of Cape Town and the Western Cape mobility MEC, Isaac Sileku, was that the killings, extortion and assassinations must end. Conflict resolution At the heart of violence — and the impact it has on commuters who rely on the services — are disputes over routes. Dr Siyabulela Fobosi, a senior researcher at the University of Fort Hare, believes that the violence can be curbed through the introduction of route-based conflict management mechanisms. Fobosi told Daily Maverick: 'Where these problems are happening, the routes are identified to say, 'Look, let's implement this conflict management there, that mechanism will be made up of a multitude of stakeholders. 'The issues are then identified. The conflict is identified in its early stages. The people are advised to practise mediation before it escalates into something that kills people.' He said the issue of route duplication must be addressed urgently, as licences are often issued without proper adherence to the law. 'We end up with too many operators on a single route. While competition is expected, it should be fair, not as cut-throat and hostile as it currently is.' Mobility MEC Sileku said his department had a five-year strategic plan to compel taxi owners and associations to register with municipalities, which would help prevent route invasions. He said there was a focus on establishing stakeholder engagement forums. The taxi industry has often been at odds with the City of Cape Town and Western Cape government, particularly over issues such as by-laws. Governments across South Africa have attempted to register and formalise the taxi industry, with Fobosi writing, 'Post-apartheid governments have failed to formalise or regulate the sector effectively, leaving it trapped in a liminal space: too essential to ignore, too unruly to reform.' Fobosi added, however, that formalising the industry was possible. A template Speakers at the Peace Summit pointed to a recent example of how conflict between operators was resolved through dialogue. In June, an agreement was reached between the Cape Amalgamated Taxi Association and the Cape Organisation for the Democratic Taxi Association to resolve route disputes and operational challenges on the Mfuleni-Somerset and Khayelitsha-Somerset West routes. Seven people were killed and five others injured in the conflict, but through dialogue, the associations resolved their disputes and came to a mutually beneficial agreement. Sileku said this agreement was a testament to what is possible when collective leadership and dialogue are prioritised and people, rather than taxi owners, are put first. Speaking about the Peace Summit, he said, 'This summit is long overdue. We have always dealt with taxi violence as it occurred. So now we have decided to sit down. Let's talk about it.' He highlighted how taxi violence affected commuters: 'A mother waits by the roadside for transport that never comes. A child loses a day of learning because a route is closed. A father does not return home because of a conflict he never chose. A community is left afraid. A family is left grieving. 'When mobility stops, life stops; there is no work, no school and no growth. That's why this summit is so important. A moment where we move from crisis to collaboration, from confrontation to partnership, from fear to a future we can all believe in.' He called on the taxi industry to rise above conflict and fear, and reiterated that the Western Cape government was not there to control or to dictate, but rather to build with the taxi industry. Tackling criminality Security strategist and former Interpol ambassador Andy Mashaile stressed the importance of protecting the taxi industry from infiltration by cartels, syndicates and criminal elements. 'Those are the people who are involved in money laundering, racketeering … those with the money of cash-in-transit heists.' 'Because those individuals want to clean their money, they will, for example, say: 'Here is your gift of R10-million; go and buy yourself some taxis.' That money that came in filthy has now been cleaned because the source of the money cannot now be identified,' said Mashaile. He added that with such vast sums of money involved, the industry was bound to attract organised crime. He called for the implementation of an integrity pact that all taxi associations must sign, which would trigger lifestyle audits on owners. Santaco's Hermanus proposed introducing a cashless system to help the industry deal with extortion. 'There is also the infiltration of the minibus industry by criminal elements, the issue of extortion by gangsters, and also instances of criminal elements within the industry itself extorting members from their own associations. This leads to violence. 'This is why we are discussing a cashless system, because we believe that if we remove cash from the taxi ranks, we will be able to deal with the issue where committee members or executives of associations want to take money from the association and use it for their own ends while eliminating anyone who tries to stop them from doing so,' he said. Hermanus emphasised the importance of vetting minibus taxi operators and drivers. The government, he said, already had those mechanisms in place. 'It is simply a matter of working with us to ensure criminal elements are eliminated,' he said. 'The only thing to do is to deregister that driver from our system — when the registration and vetting kicks you out, then you automatically become deregistered… If you have a criminal record, it is important to look at how long ago it occurred. Rehabilitation will play a critical role.' DM
