Low Cost, Low Pollution Motorised Transport in Kigali
Can electric vehicles provide a more profitable alternative for taxi drivers in Kigali, while also reducing the city’s carbon footprint?
LOCATION | Rwanda
SECTOR | Transportation
TECH | Low-cost transport
TIMELINE | February 2018 - February 2020
PIONEER | Martin Allsop
PARTNERS | Ampersand
The Challenge
There are 30,000 motorbikes, or motos, in Kigali. Mortas, Rwanda’s motorbike taxi drivers, are the main users of motos, and despite working 14 hour days, the profit a moto driver makes is very slim. 33% of driver revenue is spent on fuel, and after subtracting other fixed costs, the average drivers only take home $48 USD a month.
The Idea
If electric motorcycles are introduced and successfully adopted by the Rwandan moto taxi market, they can decrease transport costs for customers, improve livelihoods for drivers and reduce carbon emissions.
The Scaling Journey
What we learned
The electric bike rent-to-own and pay-per-swap models were shown to increase the driver’s revenue by 78% a month.
Designing solutions with modular technology, rather than fixed hardware, allows for lots of flexibility to test new approaches and to respond quickly to maintenance issues.
It was useful in this pilot to test a smaller number of products (in this case an e-moto bike) so that we could focus on understanding whether consistent revenue and lasting partnerships could be achieved with only a small number of bikes deployed.
Minimise behaviour change required to adopt a new product, especially when a technology is providing an alternative to an existing product. In this case, the drivers expressed a strong desire for the e-moto bikes to have the same design and functionality as their current petrol bikes.
All photos on this page were taken by the pilot’s implementing partner, Ampersand. Read more
Explore the step-by-step journey of the pilot – Pilot Story
Read about the EV moto’s first test drive — “First test drive of an electric moto taxi in Rwanda”
Learn more about moto’s and how EV moto’s could change the game — A Game Changer in Rwanda
Read about the pilot’s journey to scale — Finding the Route to Scale