The effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on SA’s motor industry may not be as severe as some people fear, Volkswagen SA MD Thomas Schaefer said on Tuesday.
The local sales picture is less clear. New-vehicle sales in April fell 98.4% from a year earlier, but with motor dealers open again, some recovery is certain. Aggregate local sales for the first four months of 2020 were 31.2% behind the same period of 2019, but Schaefer hoped the full-year deficit could be contained to about 15%.
Schaefer was speaking in Port Elizabeth at the announcement of a partnership between VWSA and the German government to build a 4,000-bed temporary hospital in that city for Covid-19 patients. He said he expected the first phase of the project, offering about 1,400 beds, to be ready “in six to seven weeks”.
The 66,000m² factory, in the Port Elizabeth suburb of Korsten, used to manufacture components for VWSA vehicles but now lies empty. Schaefer said once the medical conversion is complete, the facility will be run by the Eastern Cape department of health.