Lebanon launches first electric car despite economic crisis

Manufacturer of ‘Quds Rise’ hopes 10,000 vehicles will be produced by next year in the crisis-hit Mediterranean country.

A Lebanon-made electric car has made its debut, the first time the Mediterranean country has manufactured an automobile, despite struggling amid a dire economic crisis with frequent power cuts.

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

It’s the “first automobile to be made locally,” Mohammad told reporters on Saturday, at the unveiling in a parking lot 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 $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.

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