A green transportation business from Nairobi presented an electric bus on Wednesday.
Because of the many green parks that surround the capital of east Africa, Nairobi, it is known as the “Green City in the Sun.” The term “roam” is now also intended to describe the city’s environmentally friendly mobility, according to the Kenyan-Swedish business Roam.
In a city where toxic exhaust gases contribute to a dense haze, it introduced an electric bus on Wednesday.
“It’s the first electric mass transit bus in Kenya that we designed since last year and co-manufactured it with a global partner”, Dennis Wakaba exclaimed.
“This represents a shift towards better public transport, where we can have people ride in comfort and enjoy the ride with a clear conscience, because we’re talking about zero emissions”, the Roam project coordinator said.
There is no state-run transportation system in the city of roughly five million people, so the colorful bus rolled off into the dreaded morning traffic.
In Nairobi, the majority of commuter transportation is privately run, and Roam predicted that the electric bus’s prices would be competitive with those of its smokier rivals.
Innovation center
Even though the nearly five million person metropolis only has one charging station, the team Roam was unfazed. They intended to promote environmentally friendly transportation in a city where smog-belching minivans are more commonplace.
The 77-seat bus can travel 360 kilometers on a single charge before needing to be recharged for two hours. Its top speed is 70 kilometers per hour.
Additionally, it was created to be inclusive and accessible to everybody.
“It can accommodate people in wheelchairs, the elderly… So we have priority seats inside this bus”, Wakaba reveals.
“Nairobi has been seen as a leader of innovation, and we see Nairobi as a good starting point and as an innovation hub to deploy these buses”, he adds.
Roam, which also makes electric scooters and safari vehicles, said it would introduce 100 electric buses over the course of the upcoming year.
A smaller bus to complement the 77-seater has also begun its design phase.
The Green Revolution
Eighty percent of Nairobi’s commuters ride matatu****s, unreliable minivans infamous for their frightful maneuvers and black smoke trails trailing behind beaten-up chassis.
Even though Kenya’s government has made buying electric automobiles more affordable than ever, it is estimated that fewer than 500 of the country’s 3.5 million cars are electric.
According to government statistics, the transport sector contributes 12 percent of Kenya’s emissions, albeit that percentage jumps to 45 percent in Nairobi.
A 25-seater bus with a 250-kilometer range for Nairobi’s roads was launched earlier this year by BasiGo, another startup in the electric mobility space.
The majority of Kenya’s energy comes from renewable sources, and the country aims to reduce CO2 emissions by 32% by the year 2030.
