One of Kenya’s oldest public transport operators, Kenya Bus Service Management Limited , is going electric! The company has evolved over the years as the Kenyan bus sector has gone through several transformations,, including the overall shift from the formal era to the informal paratransit-operator-dominated era which brought in second-hand low-capacity vehicles — and started to upstage formal operators, leading to the collapse of many bus companies..
KBS’s first electric bus will serve the CBD-Kibera, CBD-KNH, and CBD-Utawala routes. The E9 Kubwa is assembled in Thika, Kenya, in collaboration with Kenya Vehicle Manufacturers . BasiGo and KVM aim to manufacture over 1,000 electric buses in the next 3 years, creating over 300 new manufacturing jobs and an additional 300 jobs in the ecosystem of charging, maintenance, and financing required to support electric buses in operation.
Savings of 20,000 litres of diesel per year per bus is a really big deal for a country like Kenya, which imports all of its petrol and diesel.
BasiGo says it is progressively increasing the contribution of local components as part of its local bus assembly program. Currently, components such as glass and interior seats are being sourced in Kenya. BasiGo already has a fleet of over 20 buses on the road in collaboration with several bus operators in Kenya. BasiGo plans to have over 100 buses on the road by the end of this year and over 1,000 electric buses by the end of 2026.
Let us look at the impact introducing 350 buses a year could have on the Kenyan annual bus sales market by comparing this number with some recent sales data. Introducing 350 electric buses a year and comparing this to the sales of ICE buses since 2018, we see that 350 would be about 5.5% of the number of buses sold from 2018 to 2022. 350 buses would be about 16% of all the buses sold in Kenya in 2022.