Zambia is going electric. The electronics inside those vehicles are what we already repair.

EV servicing in Zambia is new for everyone — the government directive of 9 October 2026 is what created the market. What matters is who has the underlying capability: high-voltage battery systems, battery management electronics, traction inverters and chargers. HERO Control Systems designs battery management systems and repairs inverter-class power electronics at component level in Lusaka, which is the core of EV service work. Call +260 974 546 632.

In most cases it can be repaired. A traction pack is made of modules and cells managed by a BMS; a single weak module, a loose bus-bar, a failed temperature sensor or a BMS fault will disable the whole pack. Diagnosis at cell and module level usually finds a repair far cheaper than a replacement pack imported in dollars.

A full imported replacement pack is typically the single most expensive part of the vehicle, often a quarter to a third of its value, plus freight, duty and a 4–12 week wait. That is exactly why module-level repair and rebalancing matter in a market like Zambia.

Yes. We design BMS boards ourselves — cell monitoring, balancing, protection, CAN and RS-485 telemetry — so we diagnose and repair the board rather than replacing the pack around it.

Yes. A traction inverter is a three-phase IGBT bridge with gate drivers and a control board — the same architecture as the industrial variable frequency drives we repair every week: power modules, gate drivers, DC-link capacitors, current sensors.

Yes — charger power stages, power-factor correction, isolation faults, pre-charge and contactor control, and the 12 V DC-DC converter that runs the vehicle's low-voltage systems.

Yes. Isolation faults are traced with insulation-resistance testing section by section — pack, cabling, inverter, charger, compressor — which is standard practice for us on industrial HV systems.

Yes. Hybrids use the same building blocks — a smaller traction pack, a BMS, an inverter and a DC-DC converter — and present the same electronic faults.

Yes. Larger packs and higher-current inverters are closer to the industrial equipment we already handle than a passenger car is.

Yes — industrial lithium packs, chargers and their BMS electronics, including the move from lead-acid to lithium.

Yes: pack repair and rebuilds, BMS faults, controller and charger repair. These are a large part of early electric mobility in Zambia.

Plot No. 34, Harrison Chongo Road, Nyumbayanga, Lusaka, with a presence on the Copperbelt for collection and site attendance. Site work is done across Zambia.

Our standard repair terms are a 6-month (180-day) workmanship warranty, a written report per unit, and a flat assessment fee if a unit proves beyond economical repair with no repair fee charged.

Standard turnaround is 5–7 business days from drop-off, with 48–72 hour priority under a maintenance agreement. Importing a replacement typically takes 4–12 weeks.

Yes. Scheduled inspection, battery health reporting, charger maintenance and emergency response are written into a service level agreement, which is how we already work with a contracted telecom operator and on national generator fleets.

On 9 October 2026, at the opening of the First Session of the 14th National Assembly, President Hakainde Hichilema directed that government and public institutions acquire electric vehicles, saying that unless it is not practicable, officials will drive EVs in government and public institutions. It follows an earlier Cabinet Office direction to ministries, provinces and spending agencies to begin procuring electric and hybrid vehicles.

To cut the fuel import bill and exposure to global fuel price swings. Government reported spending roughly 758 million US dollars on fuel for public institutions in a year, and the EV directive was announced alongside changes to fuel excise duty and a review of the pricing mechanism.

As announced it covers government and public institutions, with a practicability caveat in the President's own words. Published implementation rules and timelines had not been issued at the time of writing, so procuring entities should confirm the current guidance.

Vehicles are the easy part; keeping them running is the hard part. A national EV fleet needs local capability in battery systems, power electronics and charging infrastructure, or every fault becomes an import. That capability has to be built in Zambia, and it is built from power-electronics engineering.

Government has said it will invest in charging infrastructure across the country in partnership with the private sector. Installation, protection, metering and backup power for those chargers is electrical and electronic contracting work available now.

It should. The questions to settle before purchase are who services the battery and power electronics locally, what happens when a pack or inverter fails out of warranty, where the vehicles charge during load-shedding, and who trains the in-house technicians.

By designing the charge point as a power system rather than a socket: solar generation, battery storage or generator backup, with load management so charging shifts to the hours when supply is available. We design and install exactly this kind of hybrid system.

Yes. Solar can charge directly during the day or through a battery store for night charging. Sizing depends on daily kilometres, vehicle efficiency and available roof area — a load assessment answers it properly.

The comparison is ZESCO tariff per kWh against pump price per litre for the same distance. Electricity is normally the much cheaper energy per kilometre, which is the basis of the government's own fuel-saving argument. The exact figure depends on your tariff band, the vehicle's consumption and whether you charge from the grid, solar or a generator.

Most fleets start with AC charging: a single-phase wall box for light use, or three-phase units where vehicles must turn around faster. DC fast charging is for public and high-utilisation sites and needs serious supply capacity.

Yes — supply sizing, cabling, protection and earthing, surge protection, load management across several chargers, metering, remote monitoring, and solar or battery backup where the supply is unreliable.

It can, if the supply, protection and earthing are not assessed first. A charger is a sustained high load; we carry out the load assessment, upgrade the protection and verify earthing before commissioning.

With AC charging, broadly overnight for a full charge on a typical passenger EV; faster with three-phase, and much faster on DC. The limit is the vehicle's on-board charger as well as the supply.

Technically yes, with attention to power quality and generator sizing, but it defeats the fuel-saving purpose. Solar with storage is the better backup for charging.

Strongly yes. Surges and switching transients are a leading cause of electronics failure on Zambian supplies — the same mechanism that burns out industrial control cards we repair.

Yes — metered charge points with per-user reporting, which also feeds cost-per-kilometre tracking for a fleet.

Typically many years and well over a hundred thousand kilometres, with gradual capacity fade rather than sudden failure. Heat, frequent fast charging and sitting at very high or very low state of charge all accelerate ageing.

High ambient temperature accelerates cell ageing and stresses the cooling system, which is why thermal management and shaded or ventilated parking matter here more than in cooler climates. Thermal imaging of the pack and its cooling path is part of a proper inspection.

State of health is the pack's present usable capacity against its original capacity. It determines real range and resale value, and it is the number to measure before buying a used EV or accepting a warranty claim.

Yes — capacity and SoH testing, cell-level voltage and temperature analysis, and a written report. For a fleet this becomes a tracked metric rather than a guess.

Cells drift apart over time; the pack is then limited by its weakest cell. Balancing, and replacing a genuinely failed module, can restore a significant part of lost usable capacity — far cheaper than a new pack.

It can be, provided the pack is tested first. The battery is the value of the vehicle; a pre-purchase state-of-health test and BMS fault scan is the single most important check.

Packs that are no longer suitable for traction often still hold substantial capacity and can be repurposed into stationary storage for backup or solar systems — work that sits directly inside our energy storage practice.

Yes, with proper assessment, re-grouping of matched modules and a correctly configured BMS. This is second-life storage and it is particularly attractive in a load-shedding market.

At a middle state of charge rather than full or empty, out of direct heat where possible, and plugged in only if the vehicle manages charge maintenance itself.

Mismanaged ones are. The protections are a correctly functioning BMS, intact cooling and insulation, no physical damage, correct charging equipment and competent repair. Most incidents trace back to damage, poor repair or a defeated BMS.

Energy cost per kilometre from measured consumption and your tariff, plus maintenance, plus battery depreciation. EVs remove fuel, oil changes and much drivetrain wear, and add battery and electronics exposure — which is where a local repair capability changes the arithmetic.

Far less than with combustion vehicles mechanically. The real failure modes are electronic and electrical: BMS faults, module failures, inverter and charger faults, isolation faults, contactors, connectors, cooling pumps and software.

Mechanically, much less — no oil changes, no exhaust, far less brake wear through regenerative braking. What they need instead is competent electronic and high-voltage servicing.

Conversion is engineering-intensive: motor and inverter selection, pack design and mounting, BMS, charging, thermal management, controls and compliance. We have the power-electronics and pack-design capability for the electrical side and would scope any conversion project honestly on its merits.

Yes — pack design with cell monitoring, balancing and protection, CAN or RS-485 telemetry, and enclosure and thermal design. We design battery management electronics as a core activity.

Insist on battery data access and diagnostic access, documented pack architecture and module-level serviceability, state-of-health reporting, charger specification matched to your supply, availability of spare modules, and a local service and training plan — not just the vehicle price.

Yes — battery state of health, BMS fault history, inverter and charger function, insulation testing and a written report, before the money moves.

Yes. Our training division has trained more than 300 engineers and technicians, and our programmes already cover lithium packs, BMS, chargers, inverters, thermal imaging and HV safety, on real hardware.

Yes — state of charge, state of health, cycles, temperature and location into a dashboard, built on our own O'Sense platform alongside job cards and costs.

Every job produces a written technical report with findings, root cause and recommendations, and fleet work is reported per vehicle and per battery.

Zambia's EV fleet is only now being created by the government directive, so no one here has a long EV service history — and we will not pretend otherwise. What we have is the capability EV service is made of: we design battery management systems, we repair inverter-class power electronics, chargers and rectifiers at component level, and we have done it for a contracted telecom operator, a water utility and mining clients.

Because an EV is power electronics on wheels. The traction inverter, BMS, on-board charger and DC-DC converter are the same device families we repair daily; the mechanical content is small by comparison.

A garage replaces assemblies. We work at component level, design replacement boards when a part is discontinued, and publish our engineering — in Springer Nature's Discover Electronics and the Zambia ICT Journal.

Digital oscilloscopes, thermal imaging camera, power quality meter, insulation resistance tester, bench supplies and electronic measurement, load testing of repaired units, a PLC test rig, professional rework station, and in-house PCB design and board build.

MTN Zambia on a contracted framework repair agreement, Lusaka Water Supply and Sanitation Company running hardware we designed, plus ZESCO, Crown Millers, Bayer, the Ministry of Technology and Science, MultiChoice and JCHX Mining in Botswana.

Yes — Hero Control Systems Limited, incorporated at PACRA on 15 October 2021, trading since 2019, 100% Zambian-owned, registered with the Zambia Development Agency.

Yes: maintenance planning before purchase, charger infrastructure design and installation, battery and electronics servicing, technician training, and fleet monitoring — under a framework agreement with published terms.

Send a photo of the vehicle or the failed unit and its nameplate on WhatsApp to +260 974 546 632, or email sales@hcsys.co with your fleet details. For institutions, ask for the capability statement and a framework fee schedule.

Diagnosis is quoted before work starts. If a unit proves beyond economical repair, a flat assessment fee covers the diagnostics and the written report and no repair fee is charged.