Powerhive’s Electric Vehicle Fleet: Ready for Hire in Western Kenya
Written by Roland Vos, Powerhive.
Powerhive is working to bring electric vehicles (EVs) to rural Western Kenya. We believe that it’s possible to create an ecosystem around renewable technology to increase incomes, improve health and well-being as well as enable people to lead more productive lives.
At Powerhive, we supply solar electricity to communities providing clean energy to thousands of families in rural Kenya. Access to energy is crucial to improve the lives of almost 1 billion people in sub-Saharan Africa. In early 2020, we piloted EVs in our mini-grid communities and we were able to learn significant lessons about our initial EV business model. including challenges of importing and registration. We were determined to address all of our challenges given our belief that EVs can play a crucial role as anchor loads in the economic viability of mini-grids. With follow up funding in late 2020, we were able to extend our pilot program and further test our hypothesis. As of 2021, Powerhive is now proudly running a successful EV business in western Kenya.
With the extension of our pilot, we first focused on improving the technical specifications of our EVs. In the first stage of our pilot, we used Super Socos for our bikes. However, they had several limitations in the local market, and boda drivers (motorcycle taxis) did not like to use them. There was minimal physical space for multiple passengers, a lack of range limited rides to 35 km, and battery issues.
For the extension pilot, we transitioned away from the Super Socos and switched to a retrofitted Bajaj bike which had increased power and range. The bike switch has been the foundation for our biggest success: local market validation. In a sample survey of boda drivers operating in Western Kenya, 95% of drivers preferred our EV over the original petrol bike. In addition 82% of boda drivers were interested in renting our EV bikes.
A Powerhive mechanic working on the retrofitted Bajaj bike above
However, with success still comes challenges. For a petrol bike, petrol stations and petrol availability has already been put in place and is easy to access. For an EV bike, the infrastructure is not fully developed yet. In a survey of boda drivers, 11% of drivers said they were happy with the current infrastructure for the EV bikes. This leaves 89% of boda drivers dissatisfied. Even though they were happy with the technical capabilities of the bikes, they needed to be able to charge them.
In response to this challenge, Powerhive has developed a battery swapping station for African market. These stations hold 8 batteries at a time and are available to all Powerhive EV drivers. When a driver arrives at a station, he or she will remove the depleted battery, and replace it with a fully charged battery which is a process that takes 3 minutes on average. The positive side of the battery swapping station design is that there is no point of time in which the driver has to wait for his battery to charge — waiting which could cause him or her to miss a fare or expected delivery. Powerhive currently has 1 swapping station in Kenya, with 11 stations planned by the end of 2021.
Powerhive Battery Swapping Station in Kisii
Tackling our biggest challenges in the second phase of our pilot, we now have a business model that is primed for full-scalability. With the learnings from this pilot, the business model evolved to become much more cost-competitive. For example, we moved away from powering the EV fleet purely from the minigrid. Currently, we foresee a business model that uses a mix of energy that is hybrid minigrid/dedicated PV field for the swapping cabinet, combined with the national grid in cases where Solar Power is not an option. This reduces LCOE (Levelized Cost of Electricity) significantly. In addition, Powerhive has found several ways to reduce hardware cost to the absolute minimum. Both the electric bike and the swapping cabinet will have a strong local manufacturing and assembly components to save cost 20%. Finally, we realised that development of localisation and integration of hardware and software is a scalable business activity in itself, so we will offer this solution to 3rd parties in the near future.
With the appropriate technology for local drivers, market validation, and further expanding EV infrastructure — we plan to continue to grow our EV fleet and expand our support for individuals and organizations who want to go green without comprising profit margins or efficiency.
