Lebanon launches first electric car despite economic crisis

A Lebanon-made electric car makes its debut, in a double first for the Mediterranean country that has never manufactured automobiles and is wracked by economic crisis and power cuts.

The red sports car – named “Quds Rise”, using the Arabic name of Jerusalem al-Quds – is the project of Lebanese-born Palestinian businessman Jihad Mohammad.

It’s the “first automobile to be made locally,” Mohammad told reporters, at the unveiling in a car park south of Beirut.

It was built in Lebanon “from start to finish,” he said of the prototype, emblazoned at the front with a golden logo of the Dome of the Rock, the shrine in Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, Islam’s third holiest site.

The car is to cost US$30,000.

Production of up to 10,000 vehicles is hoped to start later this year in Lebanon, with cars to hit the market in a year’s time, said Mohammad, the director of Lebanon-based firm EV Electra.

(Source: AFP) 

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