Opibus: The mobility startup changing Kenya to electrical autos
[ad_1]
It is the stuff of entrepreneurial desires, and but that is what’s occurred to Opibus, a Swedish-Kenyan electrical mobility firm.
Primarily based in Nairobi, Opibus provides new life to previous autos by changing them to run on electrical motors. Starting with 4x4s, the corporate’s attain has since expanded into public transport with bus conversions. In the meantime, its electrical motorbikes, designed and manufactured in Kenya, have attracted the eye of the world’s most well-known ride-hailing app.
Opibus has roots as analysis by Linköping College college students Filip Gardler, Mikael Gånge and Filip Lövström, whose mission concerned figuring out locations the place electrical mobility might have the biggest potential affect. They pinpointed Kenya and established Opibus in 2017, beginning their enterprise by changing safari touring autos.
“We have all the time identified the business potential (of electrical conversion),” CEO Lövström says, including it was simple to persuade safari tour operators of the advantages of silent 4x4s which can be pushed on round routes and return to the identical recharging level.
Why Kenya is primed for electrical autos
Fransua Vytautas Razvadauskas, mobility and cities senior guide at market analysis firm Euromonitor Worldwide, cites excessive costs as a barrier to entry, however so too infrastructure. “For the EV rollout to achieve success (in Kenya), a big provide of charging models — each private and non-private — are wanted to forestall vary nervousness. It will, in flip, demand massive investments within the improve of electrical energy distribution models, at properties and companies,” he explains.
Utilizing electrical autos for public transport overcomes vary nervousness and charging infrastructure points to a level. A bus operator is aware of what number of miles it is going to journey in a day, what route and the place it is going to cease, and charging models will be deliberate accordingly.
Lövström believes that with a fast-growing inhabitants in sub-Saharan Africa and quickly increasing cities, buses can be an important a part of the area’s infrastructure. “We actually assume that electrical buses are an enormous a part of the way to create this transition to electrical autos, and the way to cut back emissions on each a metropolis and international degree,” he says.
A revolution on two wheels?
Razvadauskas identifies the “largest alternative” for EVs in East Africa as two- and three-wheeled autos, as a result of they’re cheaper and extra fashionable than automobiles.
“In 2021, Kenya was house to 1.8 million bikes and mopeds in contrast with 1.2 million passenger automobiles — an inclination that’s analogous in different regional international locations equivalent to Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda,” Razvadauskas says.
Opibus is trying to nook the market by way of its Kenya-made electrical motorcycle.
The corporate determined to design its mannequin from scratch as a result of no current bikes matched native customers’ wants, says Lövström. “We want one thing that may be very sturdy, very versatile, very sturdy, simple to restore and low-cost on the similar time,” he explains.
“Nearly 90% of the bikes are constructed and designed regionally,” says Lucy Mugala, a analysis and growth engineer who helped create the motorcycle. “(Electrical car manufacturing) is sort of new on this county, so we’re kind of pioneers.”
She says the motorbike has developed from having a single onboard battery to 2 detachable batteries, which use a transportable charger that may plug into any socket. Within the close to future, Mugala says docking stations filled with charged batteries may very well be a characteristic in cities, like at the moment’s petrol stations.
In December, Opibus introduced a strategic partnership with Uber as a part of the ride-hailing firm’s goal to be absolutely electrical by 2040. Opibus will provide 3,000 bikes this yr and is working with a financing companion for Uber drivers to personal the electrical bikes for business use.
The corporate has bought 150 models to this point and plans to provide 12,000 bikes in 2023. Outdoors Kenya, Opibus has motorbike trials with completely different companions in Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda.
“Increasing to different markets is certainly going to be a plus for us,” Mugala says, “however extra so (is) bringing the price of our electrical motorbikes down as little as potential.”
Plans for enlargement
“This has actually accelerated our mission to scale up manufacturing,” Mugala says, with the corporate meaning to develop its 100-strong employees and its manufacturing area to fulfill its rising output.
Opibus has ambitions to determine regional hubs, however Kenya will proceed as its base of operation — a rustic the place senior employees from Sweden have been dwelling for round 5 years already.
“We all the time knew that there have been huge alternatives,” says Lövström. “That may be very arduous to grasp once you’re not there. You want to be on the bottom.”
“(Globally, there are) 150 to 200 million new car gross sales per yr, however we now have 1.2 billion autos on the earth already,” he says of the chance electrical retrofitting represents. “We have to do one thing if we’re to succeed in our targets of getting inexperienced electrical fleets the world over.”
