Central Mechanical Equipment Department rolls out 18 electric buses, plans nationwide charging stations

Sikhumbuzo Moyo, Zimpapers Senior Writer

THE Central Mechanical Equipment Department (CMED) has taken a major step towards greening the transport sector with the department taking delivery of 18 commercial electric buses whose trial run will be this week.

The development is expected to mark a key milestone in reducing the country’s reliance on fossil fuels and forms part of the Government’s broader strategy to promote cleaner, environmentally friendly transport solutions, leveraging Zimbabwe’s rich lithium deposits, a vital component in electric vehicle batteries.

In an interview with Sunday News on the sidelines of the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development’s Eighth (Second 2025) Session of the Line Minister’s Public Entities Corporate Governance Oversight meeting held at a Bulawayo hotel last week, CMED managing director Mr Davison Mhaka said the department has taken delivery of 18 electric buses to add to the 41 electric vehicles already in use.

He said plans are under way to roll out charging stations throughout the country in preparation for more developments of that nature.

“This is what we are doing as CMED and at the moment, we have imported 18 buses and we will be deploying them in the near future and by next week, we will start doing trial runs where we establish dedicated lanes to run the buses,” said Mr Mhaka.

“The world is moving towards clean energy vehicles, you will find that come 2035 most of the developed countries will not be producing what we call internal combustion engines, fossil fuel engines, they are now going electric.

“Electric vehicles are now popular in most parts of the world such as China where most of the urban transit systems are electric. This is where, as CMED, we are trying to drive a mass urban transit system into, equivalent to Zupco,” said Mr Mhaka.

He said the use of electric cars has tangible economic benefits besides being eco-friendly, such as a reduction in fuel import bills, while the running cost is actually a quarter of a diesel bus.

Mr Mhaka said since CMED is a development agent of the State, they would want to make sure that industry also follows and start importing electric buses.

“As it is, we have a total of 41 electric vehicles and will soon be rolling out charging stations throughout the country. We will have about five charging stations here in Bulawayo and maybe two along the road to Victoria Falls. At the moment we have a single running car in Victoria Falls and a charging port,” he said.

The CMED boss said rolling out electric cars was part of its strategic plans that will be included in the National Development Strategy 2 (NSD2) that the country will roll out shortly.

He said they will go further than importing electric buses as they will also be locally producing small vehicles, which they will call neighbourhood electric vehicles.

“These vehicles will be shuttling within a hotel where they will carry linen from one end to another. What we want to do is we will get some kits from outside and also use local components such as springs and a special chassis. Come next year, we should start producing those vehicles,” said Mr Mhaka.

To practicalise the Government’s Education 5.0, Mr Mhaka said they will be engaging universities in the country so that they start producing and developing electric car parts instead of relying on imports.

Countries such as Germany, India and the Netherlands are now banning vehicles that run on fossil fuels like diesel and liquefied petroleum.

Governments worldwide are adopting policies to encourage EV adoption.
According to Reuters, global sales of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles rose by 29 percent year-on-year in March, helped by growth in China and Europe.

Sales in China were up to 36 percent from the same month of 2024 to almost 1 million vehicles.
Europe reported a 24 percent year-on-year increase in registrations to 0,4 million cars sold, as emission targets and regulations helped BEV sales in some of the continent’s main car markets — Germany, Italy and Britain, Lester said.

In the United States and Canada, EV sales rose by 12 percent to 0,2 million.