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Between the close of this year’s climate conference in Sharm el Sheikh and the 2023 climate event slated for December 2023 in the UAE, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt are all working to position themselves as new electric vehicle powerhouses.

Signaling an era where next-generation electric vehicles are made in a region most strongly associated with fossil fuels, manufacturers in the three countries are seeing new forms of government backing and technology-driven partnerships with international automotive companies.  

Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, has set the most ambitious targets for electric vehicle manufacturing.

Last month Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman launched the first Saudi vehicle brand Ceer to design, manufacture, and sell sedans and sports utility vehicles targeting consumers in the kingdom and the broader Middle East.

Ceer is a joint venture between the Saudi Public Investment Fund and Chinese manufacturing conglomerate Foxconn, which will license component technology from BMW.

“Energy and transport developments are very close to the crown prince’s heart. that’s why he put the Ceer company under the umbrella of the Public Investment Fund, which he directly oversees,” said Joseph Salem, lead Travel & Transport partner at Arthur D. Little in Riyadh.

The country aims to manufacture more than 150,000 electric cars annually by 2026.

Today, every vehicle on the road in Saudi Arabia is an import.

“The crown prince approved the aggressive set targets for EV adoption,” said Salem.

Salem’s firm is working with Saudi officials to implement policies that incentivize replacing a fleet dominated by internal combustion engine cars and buses with electric vehicles.

The consultant said environmental imperatives and emissions commitments made by the Saudi government to the world are the main driver of the push to build EVs in the kingdom.

“However, there’s also an economic element that is related to the equation,” Salem explained. 

“Today the mobility sector is wholly driven by carbon-emission vehicles. To move these vehicles, you have to use oil which is currently sold locally at a price that is subsidized by the government.”

“By building electric vehicles locally, they can save the oil and export it to the external market. The same logic applies toward renewable energy production efforts in the kingdom,” Salem said.

Egypt

Past attempts to build so-called “national” cars in the region have faltered over quality issues and a lack of brand enthusiasm.

In the early 1960s, the Egyptian-built compact “Ramses” symbolized the county’s drive for self-sufficiency.

While promoted by Egypt’s post-colonial leader, President Gamal Abdel Nasser, Ramses’ five-to-six-cars per day assembly line and reputation for mechanical unreliability doomed the national brand.

Nasser kept his presidential vehicle, a 1962 Cadillac Fleetwood.

By 1972, the state-owned Al-Nasr Automotive factory discontinued Ramses’ production.

The Al-Nasr company switched to producing Fiat models licensed by Turkish manufacturer Tofaş.

In January, President Abdel Fattah El-Sissi reprised notes of Nasserist ambition, telling the World Youth Forum in Sharm El-Sheikh that he was personally committed to seeing EVs built in Egypt.

“We have moved quickly to establish a partnership with many companies to produce electric cars in Egypt,” El-Sisi said. “Starting in 2023, we will produce the first Egyptian electric car.”

At the same event, Hisham Tawfiq, Minister for Public Enterprises, announced that military-owned Al-Nasr Automotive was negotiating with Chinese auto manufacturers to fulfill the presidential directive.

Meanwhile, in the country’s private sector, General Motors and its Egyptian partner Al Mansour Automotive are building a facility to roll out Cadillac’s all-electric midsize luxury SUV Lyriq in Egypt by the end of next year.

GM Middle East plans to launch 13 all-new EVs, building an EV line-up that includes the Chevrolet Bolt Electric Utility, a Hummer EV.

In the run-up to the locally hosted COP 27 conference, Egypt made visible strides in building a network of DC fast-charging charging stations required by an electric fleet.

Infinity Power- a joint venture between Egypt’s Infinity Energy company and the UAE firm Masdar- is already operating around 440 charging points across the country.

The company feeds the network electricity from the massive 37.2 square kilometer (14.4 square mile) Benban solar park in Aswan.

“We expect to see up to seven thousand more electrical vehicles on the road in 2023 with an annual 10% increase going forward,” said marketing director Karim El Gazzar.  “We are fulfilling the government’s plans to build a robust ecosystem for EVs.”

Turkey

In 1961 Turkish President Cemal Gürsel summoned a group of local engineers to build a car wholly designed and produced in Turkey called Devrim.

That vehicle barely made it through a Republic Day test run from Istanbul to Ankara -and clocked an even shorter production run than Egypt’s Ramses.

But five decades of steady partnerships with Fiat, Renault, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, and Ford have helped Turkey rank at number thirteen in the world for automobile production.

Last year cars, trucks, motor vehicle parts, and accessories were the country’s top export earning $25 billion in revenue for Turkey.

Trucks, light commercial vehicles, and buses have been a particular stand out for Turkey, accounting for almost 40 percent of its automotive industry in 2020.

And 2022 has seen Turkish assembly lines producing and selling EVs in the truck and bus sector.  

Ford Otosan, a joint venture between Ford Motor Co. and Koç Holding, shipped the all-electric E-Transit cargo van in April, just two months after customers in the U.S. started receiving orders from the company’s Kansas City plant in Missouri.

According to a company statement, Ford Otosan’s plant in Kocaeli, Turkey, plans to start production of the Transit Custom’s %100 electric version in the second half of 2023.

“Ford Otosan is investing more than two billion dollars and growing employment by around 3,000 to increase vehicle production capacity, including for the next-generation Transit Custom model,” said general manager Güven Özyurt.

Meanwhile, the Bursa-based manufacturer Karsan is leading in the electric minibus and bus field, accounting for 90% of Turkey’s exports.

The company’s electric buses are already on the roads in 16 countries, including the U.S.. Karsan operates its autonomous e-ATAK on a 4-kilometer route at Michigan State University just 140 km northwest of the American automobile capital of Detroit.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is voicing his enthusiasm for the electric vehicle industry.

“With mass production, the name of our country and our brands in this sector will be well known. Erdoğan said. “The world is moving towards clean energy, and we will never fall behind in this field.”

Erdoğan is visibly associated with the new Turkish e-vehicle manufacturer Togg which aims to produce 175,000 midsize SUV’s a year at its 4,300-worker Gemlik Campus located about 125 km south of Istanbul.  

In an October echo of his predecessor Gürsel, the president took First Lady Emine Erdoğan along for a test drive of the Togg on Republic Day.

“Of course, Turkey has the engineering talent and manufacturing capacity to build a top-line electric car,” said Kaan Kurşun, an Istanbul entrepreneur and co-investor with Lorenzo Schmid in the Swiss “mindset” electric vehicle prototype built in 2008.

“I wish the team at Togg could have developed an authentic brand story instead of peddling it as President Erdoğan’s car. Yes, he has many supporters in Turkey, but I don’t think that will be compelling for consumers in Dubai or Dublin, “said Kurşun. 
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French authorities plan to use an AI-assisted crowd control system to monitor people during the 2024 Paris Olympics, according to a draft law seen by AFP on Thursday.

The system is intended to allow the security services to detect disturbances and potential problems more easily, but will not use facial recognition technology, the bill says.

The technology could be particularly useful during the highly ambitious open-air opening ceremony  with Olympians sailing down the river Seine in front of a crowd of 600,000 people.

French police and sports authorities faced severe criticism in May after shambolic scenes during the Champions League final in Paris when football fans were caught in a crowd crush and teargassed.

The draft law, which was presented to the cabinet on Thursday, proposes other security measures including the use of full-body scanners and increases the sentences for hooliganism.

Organizers and Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin have both argued in favor of using so-called “intelligent” security camera software that scans images for suspect or dangerous behavior.

The use of such a system during the Olympics is an “experimentation”, the draft law says, but could be applied for future public events which face terrorism-related or crowd control risks.

“No biometric data is used, nor facial recognition technology and it does not enable any link or interconnection or automatic flagging with any other personal data system,” the bill states.

The games’ organizing committee said on November 21 that it needed to lift its budget estimate by 10 per cent from 3.98 billion euros to 4.48bn euros, partly as a result of inflation.

Rather than opening the games in an athletics stadium as is customary, organizers have planned a ceremony on July 26, 2024 with a flotilla of some 200 boats sailing down the river Seine.

The banks of the river can accommodate 100,000 people who will have to buy tickets, while another 500,000 are set to watch for free from the street level, according to government estimates.

The draft law is expected to be debated in parliament in January where the minority government of President Emmanuel Macron will need support from opposition groups to pass it.
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If not Elon, then who?

That’s a question many are contemplating since Elon Musk, Twitter’s CEO, said this week he was actively looking for a new leader to run the social media network.

Musk’s proclamation comes after more than 10 million respondents said in a Musk-created Twitter poll that he should resign. Musk followed up with a tweet that he would resign as soon as he found someone “foolish enough to take the job.”

It was one of many twists in the company’s chaotic restructuring since Musk took over in late October, a period that has included mass layoffs and resignations, advertisers fleeing, policy changes and reversals, and the suspension of some journalists’ accounts.

Musk’s management style is “break-it-to-build it,” said Andrew Miller, chief growth officer at Interbrand North America, a global brand consultancy.

Not a typical turnaround

The new Twitter CEO search has many wondering who could possibly do it. Musk would remain Twitter’s owner, and the task of turning around a beleaguered, long-underperforming company would be daunting.

“There’s a fairly large risk of being terminated or being forced to resign,” said Andy Wu, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School who researches tech entrepreneurship and strategy. “So it’s got to be someone comfortable with that outcome.”

Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla, the electric vehicle firm, had reportedly planned to be in the Twitter CEO position for only a few months. In recent weeks, Tesla investors have clamored for Musk to devote more time to the car company.

Some industry observers see Musk’s poll as a way to prime the public for a planned passing of the Twitter leadership baton.

“I think he was ready to do that, and he wanted to do it with a dramatic flair,” said Richard Hagberg, a leadership coach and psychologist who has worked with Silicon Valley CEOs and entrepreneurs.

Doing damage control

“He would never admit defeat, but maybe he recognizes that the problems he’s having with the Tesla board and some of the bad PR that’s coming his way is damaging his brand,” Hagberg added.

In addition to Tesla and Twitter, Musk is also the CEO of SpaceX, the satellite and rocket manufacturer.

Whoever takes on the role of Twitter CEO will have to share Musk’s vision for the company and contend with his involvement. Musk has a history of not relinquishing control at his other firms, Wu said.

“Elon Musk was supposed to just be an investor of Tesla, he’s actually not a founder, and he couldn’t hold himself back and had to make himself CEO,” said Wu, of the Harvard Business School. “If that’s any precedent, then this is a situation where his bias would be to hold onto power.”

Musk’s apparent fixation with creating headlines and causing a public stir also might make it harder to step down entirely from Twitter, some observers say. Musk is expected to be Twitter’s top influencer sometime in January, set to pass @BarackObama, the former U.S. president’s account, which is currently No. 1 at 130 million Twitter followers.

“Elon Musk is certainly conscious of his public persona, and this is one channel by which he directly impacts his own public persona,” Wu said. “This is one that will be especially difficult for him to step away from.”

Whether Musk stays involved in Twitter’s day-to-day operations or becomes a quiet owner, his potential CEO replacement will have other big tasks — cost cutting, revenue generating, and putting Twitter on a course to succeed.

For that, a cooler, more dispassionate temperament than Musk’s can be useful, Wu said.

“A lot of these cuts that they’re going through right now are financially necessary, and so we need someone that’s prepared to be in that position,” he said.

Some industry observers point to Musk’s inner circle for possible successors, such as former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey or venture capitalist David Sacks. Others speculate it could be a seasoned tech executive from the outside, such as former chief operating officer of Facebook — now Meta — Sheryl Sandberg.

Inspiring with a higher purpose

Whoever it is, the new leader of Twitter will need to appeal to employees’ sense of a higher purpose.

“They need to believe in the mission that overcomes the daily practicalities of the lives that we live, otherwise that style is not going to work, because you’re asking people to go well beyond what any manager should ask of its employees. And it has to start from within,” said Miller at Interbrand.

Musk has had some success doing this, rallying Tesla employees around the idea of a climate change solution vis-a-vis electric vehicles, or inspiring SpaceX workers with the dream of going to Mars. Musk also tried to rally Twitter employees around the idea of broadening free speech on Twitter, with mixed results.

Hagberg classifies Musk as a “visionary evangelist,” which he defines as a leader with a vision for the future who also can be egocentric. It’s hard to imagine two visionary evangelist leaders at Twitter. Regardless, the new CEO will have some work to do to woo what may be a rattled workforce, observers say.

“If you want people to support you,” Hagberg said, “you need to understand how to systematically get them to buy into what you’re trying to do.”
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Elon Musk said Tuesday that he plans on remaining as Twitter’s CEO until he can find someone willing to replace him in the job. 

Musk’s announcement came after millions of Twitter users asked him to step down in an unscientific poll the billionaire himself created and promised to abide by. 

“I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!” Musk tweeted. “After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.” 

Since taking over San Francisco-based Twitter in late October, Musk’s run as CEO has been marked by quickly issued rules and policies that have often been withdrawn or changed soon after being made public. 

He has also alienated some investors in his electric vehicle company Tesla who are concerned that Twitter is taking too much of his attention. 

Some of Musk’s actions have unnerved Twitter advertisers and turned off users. They include laying off half of Twitter’s workforce, letting go contract content moderators and disbanding a council of trust and safety advisors that the company formed in 2016 to address hate speech, child exploitation, suicide, self-harm and other problems on the platform. 

Musk, who also helms the SpaceX rocket company, has previously acknowledged how difficult it will be to find someone to take over as Twitter CEO. 

Bantering with Twitter followers last Sunday, he said that the person replacing him “must like pain a lot” to run a company that he said has been “in the fast lane to bankruptcy.” 

“No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor,” Musk tweeted. 

As things stand, Musk would still retain overwhelming influence over platform as its owner. He fired the company’s board of directors soon after taking control. 
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