From Electrical Bikes On Uber & Bolt To Neta V Electrical Taxis, Nairobi’s EV Scene Is Beginning To Flourish

By Imran Last updated Dec 14, 2024

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With over 2 million inside combustion engine bikes in Kenya, the bike sector presents a big addressable marketplace for firms serious about electrification. Bikes are primarily used as public transport autos in Kenya. These bike taxis are popularly often known as boda bodas. The bike taxi business is a crucial section of Kenya’s economic system. Transitioning this sector to electrical will make an enormous distinction within the pockets of the house owners of the bikes, as riders stand to save lots of fairly a bit on fuelling and upkeep prices.

It comes as no shock then that the Kenyan bike sector has attracted over 30 startups trying to faucet into electrification of this business. Registrations of electrical bikes in Kenya took nearly 4% of the entire market share of bikes in Kenya in 2023. 2023 was the primary time Kenyan bike gross sales market noticed a noticeable improve within the share of electrical bikes within the total new registrations market. In 2023, there have been 70,691 bikes bought in Kenya. 2,557 of those had been electrical. Meaning 3.6% of bikes bought in 2023 in Kenya had been electrical. That’s nearly 4%! Quickly the market share will attain the important 5% threshold, which is usually seen because the tipping level indicating the beginning of mass adoption. The share of electrical bikes rose to three.6% in 2023 from 2.8% in 2022 and 0.5% in 2021.

2024 appears to be an excellent higher 12 months. Driving round Nairobi and taking a look at it anecdotally, there seem like an entire lot extra electrical bikes on the street now. The thrilling factor is that we’re seeing a variety of motorbikes from completely different firms, which is nice as a result of it signifies that much more of those Kenyan electrical bike firms are beginning to scale up fairly properly. It’s pretty simple to identify a number of electrical bikes from Arc Journey, Ampersand, Roam, and Spiro whizzing via the streets of Nairobi. A whole bunch of those electrical bikes are actually on ride-hailing platforms equivalent to Uber and Bolt.

One other thrilling growth is that it’s now simpler to identify battery charging and swapping stations from all these firms as one drives round Nairobi, which suggests most of them are deploying extra swapping stations because the fleet of bikes on the roads will increase. Final week, we even managed to see a reasonably lengthy queue at certainly one of these battery swapping stations, which is a pleasant drawback to have for operators by way of demand for swapping providers. I reached out to the corporate and so they confirmed that that is now an everyday incidence and that further swapping stations in that neighbourhood are already below building to cater to elevated demand. These must be opening this month to offer riders in that a part of city extra areas for them to get battery swapping providers. I reached out to a couple gamers within the business, and so they reckon over 100 electrical bikes are actually being added per week. This has been occurring over the previous couple of months.

If we have a look at final 12 months, 2,557 electrical bikes had been added in 2023. Now I’d say maybe 40 had been added per week within the first half of this 12 months, 60 per week within the third quarter, and 100 per week within the 4th quarter of this 12 months, it will suggest that 3,120 electrical bikes may have been added this 12 months. And if we assume that the entire gross sales of bikes was flat at 70,000, this might imply about 4.5% of bikes registered in 2024 could be electrical. Let’s look forward to official registration figures after they come out within the new 12 months, however I believe we won’t be too far off. There most likely might be greater than that.

I additionally spoke with a number of boda boda riders who’re utilizing electrical bikes, and several other riders who had been utilizing electrical bikes for not less than 7 months informed me that they’re very proud of their electrical bikes. Thus far, they haven’t skilled any points with their electrical bikes. I spoke with riders who’re presently utilizing electrical bikes from completely different firms with a view to get a view on the completely different bikes and their person experiences. The riders I spoke with additionally stated that in the event that they had been to decide on between the present electrical one they’re utilizing now and the fossil-fueled one they had been utilizing beforehand, they might select the electrical one.

The one barely unfavourable remark I received from interviewing individuals within the business is that as a result of the upfront buy worth of electrical bikes is increased than the fossil gasoline (ICE) equal, the deposit a rider has to pay to get one can be increased, which limits some from accessing them since they most likely would have saved simply sufficient for a deposit to get an ICE bike with a decrease deposit requirement.

Really, I received extra barely unfavourable suggestions from quite a few riders saying that, though they’re proud of their present electrical bikes as a result of they meet all of their every day necessities in Nairobi, they don’t like the truth that all of that is simply restricted to Nairobi. There aren’t any battery swap station (fairly, not many areas have swap stations) exterior Nairobi. There aren’t any swap stations alongside the nation’s main highways, which means that riders can’t take their bikes exterior Nairobi. This appeared like a significant ache level for the riders. I’m not positive how usually they wish to take their electrical bikes up nation or to the Kenyan coast, nevertheless it appeared to trouble fairly a couple of riders. Do a few of them relocate and transfer their operations to different cities at occasions after they use ICE bikes? Or maybe it’s extra to do with the benefit of reselling to operators in different cities as soon as a rider decides to improve his bike? In any case, because the business grows, extra battery swapping stations will come to extra cities and cities round Kenya.

The opposite factor I observed is that of late, there are fairly quite a few Neta V electrical automobiles doing rounds as electrical taxis in Nairobi. Principally, day by day final week I noticed a special color Neta EV taxi in several components of Nairobi. Moja EV, the official sellers of Neta EVs in Kenya, says it has plans to ship 500 autos by the center subsequent 12 months. These autos might be leased to taxi drivers working in Nairobi, marking a big step towards revolutionizing the native transportation panorama. Moja EV says electrical autos current quite a few financial benefits over conventional inside combustion engines. With decrease gasoline and upkeep prices, taxi drivers utilizing NETA V electrical automobiles can improve their profitability and total monetary stability.

I additionally noticed fairly quite a few 24kWh, 30kWh, in addition to 40kWh Nissan Leafs. Plug-in hybrids such because the Mitsubishi Outlander are additionally changing into fairly well-liked in Kenya. I handed by the EVChaja charging station at Two River Mall and bumped right into a gentleman that was charging his Mitsubishi Outlander on the mall. He informed me that he had simply obtained the automotive on the day prior to this and that this was his first ever charging session. How cool is that? I additionally spoke with the staff at EVChaja, and so they stated they’ve observed elevated utilisation at their charging stations round Kenya and this soar in utilisation has been fairly important within the final half of 2024. EVChaja has charging stations in most of Kenya’s main cities and cities.

So, there are actually extra electrical bikes and electrical automobiles on the street in Kenya. The numbers are nonetheless decrease than in different places all over the world, however there are indicators of actual progress now. Thrilling occasions forward!

Pictures by Remeredzai