The transition to electric mobility is gaining momentum around the world. We regularly get updates on sales charts from several markets around the world right here on CleanTechnica. Most of the time, we get good news of record market share for electric vehicles in the new vehicle sales charts in these market updates. It’s great to see all this progress on paper, but it’s even better to actually see all this progress on the streets of various countries around the world.
A colleague of mine recently traveled to Norway and was just amazed at the sheer number of electric vehicles on the roads there. It reminded me of how far we have come along this transition. For example, comparing the number of cars I randomly bumped into on a visit to the United Kingdom in 2014 and to some extent in 2018, when you would have to search for electric cars with a microscope, and a more recent visit to the UK last year, electric cars seem to be literally everywhere in London now. One can see and feel the progress made so far.
This also made me think about all the exciting developments in the electric bus sector in Kenya. Four Nairobi bus operators are now using electric buses. I was very curious to find out if one has to do an Easter egg hunt type of exercise to spot some electric buses. Although BasiGo shares a cool platform where you can actually track where some of the electric buses are at any time on the routes operated by bus operators, I was more excited to see that one can now easily spot these electric buses in Nairobi. Here are some pictures of an Embassava Sacco BYD K6 electric bus that I just randomly bumped into in Nairobi ferrying passengers.
Image by Remeredzai Kuhudzai | CleanTechnica
Image by Remeredzai Kuhudzai | CleanTechnica
Image by Remeredzai Kuhudzai | CleanTechnica
How cool is that? I asked around and people told me that they also see them quite often on the roads now. Here are some more cool pictures taken by Alex Munene that show a high-capacity electric bus from Roam together with a minibus supplied by BasiGo.
Image by Alex Munene
Image by Alex Munene
It’s been a good start for the electric bus sector in Kenya, and companies in this sector are planning to scale up fairly quickly. BasiGo has now supplied close to 20 electric buses progressively since last year, and these have driven over 265,000 kilometers and carried over 340,000 passengers as part of fleet operations with four Nairobi bus operators. This is since launching in Kenya in just March 2022. BasiGo is already planning to supply over 1,000 locally manufactured mass transit electric buses to transport operators in Kenya over the next three years. With several other players now active in the sale and assembly of electric buses in Kenya, it looks like we are in for some very exciting times ahead.
Are the number of electric buses in your town growing? I do hope so. Let us know in the comments below which city you are from and how it’s going on the electric bus side of things in your town.
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