Industry insiders are betting that 2026 will be the year of range-extended electric vehicles (REEVs) in Egypt. One of them, Abu Ghaly Motors Vice President Tamer Kotb, goes so far as to say that REEVs could account for as much as 50-60% of new car sales in Egypt in the coming year.

“The real growth story won’t be pure electric cars, but new-energy vehicles (NEVs), including plug-in hybrids and range-extended EVs,” Kotb notes. “I see strong inflows. Manufacturers and agents are heavily focused on NEVs as the price of petrol increases [thanks to government subsidy cuts] and thanks to the lower operating and maintenance costs of EVs,” he adds.

Everyone and their brother is bringing “new energy” models to the market: In just the past week, Karim Sami Saad’s Natco introduced two extended-range models from Exeed (Chery’s luxury brand), while GB Auto launched three extended-range models from premium Chinese brand Li Auto. GB had new-energy models in each of the three brands it rolled out in the last year, according to GB Auto board member Mansour Kabbani: Li Auto, South Korean luxury brand Genesis, and Changan’s Deepal.

And they just keep coming: Just yesterday, El Tarek Automotive — one of the nation’s largest multi-brand distributors — reintroduced the Chinese brand DFSK, featuring a lineup of vehicles with REEV technology.

A number of global brands are looking at Egypt as a potential manufacturing hub for REEVs, says Ahmed Fikry Abdel Wahab, vice president of the African Association of Automobile Manufacturers (AAAM). Why? Range-extended EVs are particularly well-suited to Egypt and much of Africa, he explains, noting, “charging infrastructure will take decades to roll out” across the continent. (Abdel Wahab is also managing director of Natco’s Egyptian German Automotive Company.)

Uh, Enterprise? What’s a REEV?

Demystifying industry-speak: A REEV is essentially an electric car with a small internal combustion engine that works only as a generator, switching on to produce electricity when the battery runs low. The wheels are always driven by an electric motor. On a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV), both the engine and the electric motor can directly drive the wheels via parallel drivetrains.

In practice, REEVs deliver a smooth, EV-like driving experience while reducing mechanical complexity and range anxiety: Even the tank-like Rox01 claims a range of more than 1.1k km.

When it comes to batteries, REEVs sit in the middle: Much larger than PHEV packs, but smaller than those in pure EVs, which rely on large batteries to cover the full range without an internal-combustion backup.

!_Subhed_! A paradigm shift? Not yet.

EV sales grew significantly in 2025, but they still represent no more than 5% of total new-car sales, according to Kotb. Egyptian buyers have licensed about 18.5k passenger EVs since 2021 — 1,267 of them in the past month alone, according to data from the Compulsory Motor Ins. Pool.

Kabbani, who drives a full EV, doesn’t see EVs taking over the local market in the near-to-medium term. He points to two drawbacks: A still-embryonic national network of charging stations — and a little thing called “range anxiety.”

Range anxiety “is a very big overhang,” he says. “Forget going to Gouna. You’ll stop in Zafarana — either the station is working or it’s not. And if it is working, maybe a car is already plugged in, so what are you going to do?”

The potential game changer?

BYD is coming: Perhaps the most anticipated event in the local automotive market is the introduction in early 2026 of global EV leader BYD’s electric and hybrid vehicles through Mansour Group’s Maneast. Even without an official distributor in place, parallel-market imports of BYD EVs currently account for roughly one-third of monthly EV sales.

Adaptation

Hybrid vehicles are going to re-shape the market for buyers and sellers alike, whether we’re talking PHEVs, EVs, or REEVs.

“The elephant in the room is that the resale value of electric cars is very poor worldwide. This is a phenomenon,” says our friend Maged El Tawil, a car dealer better known for Cars by Maged, the nation’s number-one automotive YouTube channel with more than 620k subscribers. “You’re talking about something in their infancy compared to internal combustion, which has been around for more than 120 years. Today you can change your internal combustion engine for 10% of your car’s price, but if you want to change your EV battery, you’ll pay 40 or 50% of the car’s price,” Maged explains.

For distributors, the economics of selling pure EVs is also a significant change from selling ICE vehicles: “It’s almost like being a mobile phone distributor. Mobile phones do not require maintenance,” Maged says. That’s a paradigm shift for dealers selling cars with internal-combustion engines. Aftersales parts and service revenues (think oil changes and transmission work) contribute maybe 15% of a distributor’s revenues — but can account for up to 60% of its gross profit.

EVs can require as much as 40% less maintenance than a petrol-fueled car, leaving distributors trying to make up their margins on tires, software upgrades, and post-collision bodywork (a good revenue stream in Egypt). Kabbani notes that EVs aren’t maintenance-free, though, pointing to the need to replace brake pads, tires, and other components.

Our take

Hybrid vehicles including REEVs and PHEVs offer the best of both worlds — the range of a conventional vehicle combined with cutting-edge Chinese tech and a taste of what our full-EV future might look like. And with perhaps a decade before Egypt is notably far down the road to full-EV future, they offer better-than-EV aftersales margins to local brand owners used to the fat margins on ICE models.

Think of them as a “walk-before-you-run” bridge technology: mostly electric, range-flexible, and better suited to our market, where charging infrastructure will be built-out over a decade or more.

What remains unclear: How should REEVs be treated in the licensing process, given the variation in the capacity and function of their gasoline engines? For now, REEVs and PHEVs are being temporarily licensed as EVs, pending the introduction of a formal hybrid classification within the car licensing system next year, while mild-hybrid vehicles continue to be treated as conventional IC vehicles.

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