First test drive of an electric moto taxi in Rwanda

In the below video you can see Ampersand’s CTO Alp Tilev taking one of our prototypes out for it’s first voyage on the streets of Kigali. Ampersand is developing electric motorcycles as a better, cheaper alternative to petrol motorbikes, for the three million motorcycle taxi drivers in East Africa.

The challenge we are working on now is to figure out now what type and configuration of electric two wheeler would work well in Rwanda, and go toe-to-toe with the 125cc motorbikes that everybody uses here (see below).

So we set off to work out what vehicle design will have the right amount of power, efficiency/range, and the right style and ‘ride-feel’, appeal to moto drivers, and save them lots of money.

Our approach was to cast a wide net, and prepare five very different actual working prototypes for Rwanda using off-the-shelf vehicles and components. We selected five existing off-the-shelf vehicles in China, and upgraded them. To at least get close to the competing motorcycles in Rwanda, we first had to see what we were up against. First we saw how the existing motorbikes performed on the steepest street in Kigali. We also ran our own tests to measure their fuel cost per kilometer, and top speed. Our test process is described below. Then we knew what we had to beat.

Next we went to China and found five very different ‘off the shelf’ vehicles that we would use as prototypes. We then adapted these to get closer to the requirements of the roads here. We also hoped that we would find a great existing product that we could just start selling in Rwanda right away, but we weren’t that lucky.

Now we are testing these in Rwanda to see what works best in the real world, with real customers. The performance testing and iteration process we are working through now includes both real world driving, and lab testing on our workshop test-rig. From this we can see both the difference in performance across different models, wheel diameters, motors, programming and so on. The other key question is ‘what do customers want?’

Preliminary climbing and fuel consumption tests

Here’s how we measured the performance of competing bikes, looking at climbing ability and fuel economy.

Hill climbing: One thing we did was we found and measured the angle of the steepest streets in Kigali, with kind support from the international GIS mapping firm ESRI who told us where the steepest streets should be according to GPS topographical data. I then spent a day on the back of a moto visiting the ten steepest streets, and measured the incline of each one. Finally, I tested how the petrol taxi motorbikes performed on the steepest street in Kigali, a cobbled street in the Nyarutarama area. I found they had a 50/50 success rate getting up the hill with a passenger on the back.

Fuel economy: Next we conducted fuel consumption tests to work out the cost per kilometer that we have to compete with. This also told us how far motos really travelled in a day, their average speed and vertical climbing, and how much time they spent at rest. To do this we asked 12 drivers to come to us at the start of their working day. We drained all the fuel out of the tanks of their motorcycle, then and refilled the tanks with exactly five litres of fuel. We then gave the drivers a pouch with a smartphone phone running a GPS mapping app. At the end of the day we then measured how much fuel was left, and saw from the app how far drivers had driven and where.

Learnings

Putting together the five prototypes and getting them to Rwanda took longer than we’d hoped. In the end it still took over a year to get these wheels on the road in Kigali. One cause of delay was asking the suppliers to make small modifications, the sort of thing that for us would involve a trip to a hardware store and a couple of hours in the workshop. Communication with suppliers was also a challenge, and more trips to China would have helped a lot with that. If we’d had a little more money, we could have sent two separate containers from China to Rwanda, starting with just one or two models. That way we could (literally) get things rolling while we waited for the rest. Logistics and organising all the items to be in the same place at the same time, from seven different suppliers, with the right paperwork, was also a bit of a nightmare. Even with a sourcing agent supporting us on the ground.