EVs Are Getting Cheaper in South Africa. Small Businesses Are Going to Notice

The price of an electric car in South Africa has been coming down.

AutoTrader says the average price of a new battery-electric vehicle fell 13% during the first half of 2026. Chinese manufacturers are also bringing more models into the country, with some competing at prices that would have been difficult to find in the local EV market a few years ago. For a small business, the interesting part isn't simply buying an electric car. It is everything that happens after the car is sold. Consider a small workshop in Johannesburg.

For years, its customers have arrived with petrol and diesel cars. That work is not going away overnight. But if more customers start arriving with electric vehicles, the workshop will need people who know how to diagnose them, work safely around high-voltage systems and deal with problems that don't exist on conventional cars.

The same applies to electricians. Someone buying an EV may need a charger installed at home. A company putting three or four electric vehicles into its fleet may need chargers installed at its premises. A hotel or shopping centre may decide to add charging points for customers. That is work for electrical contractors.

The used-car market could be interesting

There is another business sitting further down the road. Electric cars sold today will eventually be sold as used vehicles. A buyer looking at a five-year-old EV will want to know whether the battery is still in good condition.

A battery inspection could become as important to some buyers as a mechanical inspection is today. That gives workshops and specialist businesses another service they can charge for. Dealers will also have to learn how to sell these cars properly. A customer may want to know how long the battery warranty lasts, how much a home charger costs and what happens if they cannot charge at home.

Fleets will do the maths

Small businesses that use vehicles every day may be among the first to take a serious look at cheaper EVs. A courier company, for example, can work out exactly how much it spends on fuel because its vehicles are on the road every day. It can compare that with electricity costs, the purchase or finance cost of an EV, servicing and the distance the vehicle needs to travel each day.

For a delivery vehicle doing short trips around a city, that calculation may look quite different from a vehicle travelling long distances between provinces. So a lower EV price does not mean every business should rush out and buy one.

But it does bring the purchase price closer to a point where more owners can sit down with a calculator and see if it works. And that is where smaller businesses outside the car-selling business can benefit. There will be money in fitting chargers, servicing EVs, checking batteries, supplying parts and helping businesses run electric fleets. The cars may be changing. A lot of the businesses making money from them will look familiar.