For decades, South Africa’s automotive industry has been a quiet success story.
Over 100,000 people work in plants across Rosslyn, Kariega and East London, stamping metal and assembling engines with precision. The sector contributes roughly 5% of GDP and anchors entire local economies.
But the cars rolling off those production lines are changing in ways that threaten everything the industry has built.
Cars are becoming computers on wheels—electric drivetrains, AI assistants, over-the-air software updates, autonomous driving features—and that shift is happening somewhere else.
The question isn’t whether South Africa will make cars in 2035. It’s whether we’ll do anything beyond bolt them together.
The shift nobody talks about
A modern electric car contains hundreds of millions of lines of code.
It has dozens of computers talking to each other, sensors feeding data constantly, and software that can be updated remotely overnight.
Features that used to be mechanical are now software-driven. The infotainment system rivals a smartphone. The voice assistant understands your accent and your preferences.
In short, the car has become a software platform.
And software platforms are designed, built and updated by engineers in Silicon Valley, Berlin, and increasingly China—not in South African plants.
Why this matters
For 30 years, South Africa’s advantage was straightforward: competitive wages, skilled assembly workers, and logistics to ship globally.
That was enough when cars were mostly mechanical.
But as OEMs shift focus to electric and software-heavy vehicles, they’re asking a different question: where should we build the brains of the car, not just the body?
The answer, increasingly, is not South Africa.
If you’re only offering assembly and low-cost labour, you’re competing on price alone. And there’s always somewhere cheaper.
But if you can offer software engineering, systems integration, and innovation—that sticks. That’s where OEMs want to invest long-term.
Over the next decade, as new EV platforms roll out and legacy ICE production winds down, model allocations could dry up.
The industry could shrink quietly, relegated to assembling yesterday’s technology while the real innovation happens elsewhere.
The hidden advantage
Ironically, South Africa actually has a unique advantage in this new world. It’s just not the one we’ve been relying on.
Global tech companies and OEMs struggle to localise. A voice assistant that works in German might be useless in isiXhosa. Navigation assumes paved highways and formal addresses, not townships.
Safety systems tuned for European motorways don’t account for South African potholes. But local teams can crack this.
If South Africa built a world-class software and systems engineering hub—teams who understand local languages, roads, and needs—we’d have something genuinely hard to replicate.
As vehicles become smarter and more connected, localisation becomes a competitive advantage.
The company that builds AI-driven assistants in South African languages, navigation that works in informal settlements, and safety systems tuned to our roads, will have something valuable to sell globally.
But we’re not building those teams. In fact, we’re not even talking about it seriously.
The skills crisis
Right now, if you work in a South African automotive plant, you’re probably skilled at welding, stamping, or mechanical maintenance. Those skills will remain valuable.
But the industry is hungry for something different: software engineers, systems integrators, cybersecurity specialists, data scientists, and people who can design digital experiences.
South Africa produces capable engineers and computer science graduates, albeit not nearly enough, and not in the right places.
Most of our tech talent gravitates to Johannesburg startups or overseas opportunities, not to automotive plants in Rosslyn or East London.
Meanwhile, OEMs are deciding where to base their software teams. If they don’t see a local pipeline, they’ll build those teams in Germany, India, or China instead. And once they do, it’s hard to reverse.
What needs to happen
Getting this right requires coordinated action starting now.
Government needs to signal it’s serious about the software era—extending incentives beyond physical production to include local software development and systems integration.
OEMs need to commit to locating real engineering work here and partnering with universities to build pipelines of software-savvy engineers. Schools need to stop treating IT and engineering as separate worlds.
And workers need leverage to negotiate not just for job preservation, but for skills transformation.
The fork in the road
In 2035, there are two possible scenarios.
In one, the industry is still large on paper—plants humming, exports flowing—but the work is increasingly routine. New EV platforms are designed elsewhere, tested elsewhere, updated elsewhere.
South African plants assemble them competently but without much say in what they’re building. Wages stagnate. Young people see limited opportunity and leave.
In the other scenario, South Africa has become a genuine innovation hub. Engineers here are designing and localising software for global vehicles. Teams are cracking AI-driven assistants in local languages.
The country is a centre for EV systems integration and testing. It’s not Silicon Valley—but it’s a place where serious automotive engineering happens, where OEMs want to invest, where young people see a future.
The difference between these two scenarios isn’t inevitable. It’s a choice. But right now, we’re watching it happen somewhere else.