INTERVIEW
FAST CHARGERS
T&FME catches up with Samer Choucair as ION continues its electrifying progress
T
he name Samer Choucair will be familiar to long-term readers of T&MFE. Last interviewed in 2018, the head of self-styled incubators of businesses Crescent Enterprises’ CE-Creates has continued to oversee the development of the region’s first sustainable transporter. T&MFE caught up with Choucair recently just as ION was announcing its collaboration with French company, NAVYA to operate and maintain the company’s electric and autonomous shuttles, as well as promote its vehicles and related activities in the UAE and the GCC region. It also announced it January that the joint venture with Bee’ah is partnering with the Sharjah City Municipality, and Sharjah
22 MARCH 2020
Electricity and Water Authority (SEWA) to supply, install and operate public electric vehicle charging stations across the emirate. The new charging stations will play an important role in accelerating the UAE’s ongoing agenda of electrifying its transportation and supporting the current electric vehicle network. With a mandate to promote green mobility solutions in the region, ION said it will build a vast network of charging stations across the emirate in a phased approach. In more ways than one, this is a company on a charge. Remind readers, what is ION and what makes it the region’s first sustainable transporter?
About two years ago, we started thinking
We’re at a point where the private sector needs to contribute. We are at an inflection point”
about building a sustainable transportation business. Crescent Enterprises’ is a privatelyowned conglomerate based out of Sharjah. We are in various sectors including ports and logistics: we have construction; we have some aviation investments. About 10 years ago, the group decided to make the conscious decision to start investing in the sustainability space and making sustainability part of the ethos of the group. As such, we built various platforms that invest in different stages of businesses and one of them is called CE Creates, which is a very early stage incubator of new concepts. Part of that platform is ION – which was an idea of creating a sustainable transportation business that we can roll out across the region. We took a strategic decision to partner with Bee’ah, which is today a sustainable living business rather than Waste Management meconstructionnews.com
