Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Mansour's $150 million electric car plant to open in 2027

Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Mansour's Mansour Group expects to finish building its electric-vehicle plant in 6th of October City, west of Cairo, in the first quarter of 2027, part of a localization project the group has valued at more than $150 million.

Mansour and Ankush Arora, chief executive officer of Mansour Automotive, outlined the timeline to Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly at a meeting in the New Administrative Capital on Nov. 3 to review progress on the factory. Industry Minister Khaled Hashem, Investment and Foreign Trade Minister Mohamed Farid and Oliver Dowden, the former U.K. deputy prime minister who is now a strategic adviser to the family's investment firm Man Capital, also attended.

Mansour said the plant will build electric vehicles and their components for the Egyptian market using environmentally friendly technology, and will create thousands of jobs. He described it as one of the region's and Africa's major planned automotive facilities. Hashem said expanding the manufacture of electric vehicles, batteries and components is an industrial priority for the government, and Farid said his ministry would help speed up the project's procedures.

SAIC partnership and financing

The factory is being built by MAC for Mobility Manufacturing, a Mansour company, in a joint venture with China's SAIC Motor Corp., which owns the MG brand. The two sides signed their agreement in December 2024 to make MG vehicles locally. The first phase will be able to produce as many as 50,000 sedans, sport-utility vehicles and microbuses a year, and capacity is planned to rise to 100,000 vehicles after a second phase.

The main project is estimated to cost 6.3 billion Egyptian pounds ($114 million). In April, state-owned Banque Misr lent 2.7 billion pounds ($49 million) to the venture, covering about 43% of that cost, with the rest coming from equity put in by Mansour and SAIC. The facility covers 126,000 square meters, and Egyptian contractor Hassan Allam is handling the main construction works. Egypt's cabinet gave the project a golden license, a fast-track permit for priority investments, in December 2025, and the government has said at least half of the output will be exported.

Kamel Al-Wazir, then deputy prime minister for industrial development, laid the foundation stone with Mansour in November 2025. The group had first aimed to start production in the third quarter of 2026.

Right to Dream deal

At the same session, Mansour signed a separate agreement in his role as chairman of the Right to Dream academy with Youth and Sports Minister Gohar Nabil to launch a national football talent program. Madbouly and Finance Minister Ahmed Kouchouk witnessed the signing.

Under the protocol, five regional development centers will be built across Egypt and opened in phases. Each will have football pitches, a gym, classrooms, medical facilities and accommodation for players, who will receive accredited schooling coordinated with the Ministry of Education. Right to Dream will run the technical, sporting and scouting work, while the ministry will provide, equip and operate the facilities. No cost was disclosed.

Mansour said the program aims to prepare "a new generation of athletes according to the highest international standards."

Right to Dream was founded in Accra, Ghana, in 1999 by Tom Vernon, a former Africa scout for Manchester United. Mansour Group took majority control in 2021 through a $120 million investment, and Mansour became chairman. The academy owns Danish top-flight club FC Nordsjaelland and opened its Egyptian campus in Badya, west of Cairo, in 2023. Mansour is also the founding partner and chairman of Major League Soccer club San Diego FC.

Mansour's fortune

Mansour, 78, chairs Mansour Group, the family conglomerate his father started in 1952. He opened General Motors dealerships in Egypt in 1975 and built them into one of GM's largest distributors worldwide. The group, which employs about 60,000 people, is also the Caterpillar Inc. distributor in Egypt and several other African countries and runs McDonald's restaurants in Egypt. Mansour served as Egypt's transport minister from 2006 to 2009 and holds Egyptian and British citizenship.

His brothers Yasseen and Youssef, who co-own the group, are also billionaires. Mansour is worth $4 billion, according to Forbes.

Figures were converted at 55.34 Egyptian pounds to the dollar.