Electric ride??? Keep it!

Nov 08, 2011

UGANDA'S first electric car, produced by the College of Engineering, Design, Art and Technology at Makerere University, was successfully test driven on Tuesday. While the whole nation was ecstatic about this invention, David Kiiza says hash it y’all.

UGANDA'S first electric car, produced by the College of Engineering, Design, Art and Technology at Makerere University, was successfully test driven on Tuesday. While the whole nation was ecstatic about this invention, David Kiiza says hash it y’all.

Enough with the melodrama All of a sudden, there is nothing else that my friends from Makerere University can talk about besides the fact that they made a car.

All of a sudden, everyone wants to be noticed and yet most of them spent their time admiring the FIFA 12 videogame during lecture time and were completely and utterly useless to the cause.

I think they are the ones who have shaped my negative attitude to all this hogwash of a car being invented in Uganda. I have to admit that I too, was intrugued in the beginning.

That is why I put on my Lois Lane mask and headed to Makerere, which has now turned into a fully fledged pilgrim site. What I wanted to take a look at was supposed to be the said invented car that had cost about sh92.4m of taxpayers’ money.

I have still not come around to terms of calling it Kiira EV or Wandegs Motors (WM) so you will excuse me if I call it Invented Car (IC). If you are lucky, you’ll catch the IC making rounds on campus like it’s Formula 1 testing for the Makerere Grand Prix.

They called it Kiira Electric Vehicle (KEV) because of the first hydro-electric plant in Uganda, which is stationed at Kiira in Jinja. That’s the most sensible explanation that the students at Makerere College of Engineering, Design, Art and Technology could come up with, apparently.

I am a bit slow at understanding presentations, so you guys will have to make do with my interpretation below of what makes the KEV different from other cars: It is completely electric.

Which means that it runs on batteries and turbine technology. This means that it has to be recharged. The battery allows you to drive for 80km, after which you have to take out your big pin charger and look for the nearest wall socket. The electricity it uses to charge if it is to cover the 80km is worth sh6,000.

In case you are not able to recharge it, the inventors covered all the bases on this one by making it lightweight. Making it convenient to be pushed or carried where need be. I have never been a big fan of two-seater vehicles, mainly because boda bodas creep me out so much, but I think I will make an exception for this one once it hits the market.

However, I would prefer a model in a more descent colour. I personaly do not believe that lemon green is the best that Sadolin could have come up with. Talking about Sadolin, the Kiira EV is composed of mainly local materials, with only a few items like the steering wheel being imported from abroad.

The body is made of sheets from Roofings Limited, a company well known for making iron sheets. What remains to be seen is whether the car body will last longer than Roofing’s sheets. That is the only item whose origin can be accounted for because most of the other local materials were made in Katwe, a Kampala surburb famous for its application of nigger technology.

It should be noted, however, that the Kiira EV is not the first electric car to be invented. Other countries such as China, France, Germany and the U.S have successfully tested their electric cars. That is why it would not be politically correct if I called it an invention because in truth, its an imitation. Atleast we imitated it before Tanzania. It’s good to know we are not that backward.

I do not intend to sound sarcastic, but someone has to keep their head up amid this hullaballoo. Someone has to be down to earth. On the contrary, I applaud the efforts of the students at the now open University near Wandegeya and the faith of our Government.
But as a Ugandan, I had started making an effort to stay away from anything that uses electricity, because electricity in this country is so unreliable. In fact, its a once in a lifetime phenomenon, a rarity.

So, how do you expect me to use an electric car? Who cares about my thoughts anyway? I am just another pilgrim at Makerere, staring at the Ugandan Grand Prix until my maalo wears off.

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