Time flies with great content! Renew in to keep enjoying all our premium content.
E-vehicle firm Roam opens fast charging station in Nairobi
EV companies have been partnering with local oil marketing companies like TotalEnergies to expand their DC charging station networks by setting up charging points at gas stations, avoiding the extra costs of setting up standalone charging stations.
Kenyan electric vehicle (EV) company Roam Motors has opened a fast-charging station for light vehicles in Nairobi that allows electric motorbike operators to charge their 80-kilometre-range batteries to full capacity in 20 minutes.
The 6.6-kilowatt direct current (DC) station has open-charge standards, making it interoperable across two-wheelers, tuk-tuks, and light passenger cars, regardless of the manufacturer.
Motorists have had to spare up to an hour to fill up their batteries using fixed chargers at Roam’s 15 charging hubs in Nairobi, while mobile chargers take up to three hours.
The company said the new fast-charging station will operate day and night, and motorists will charge their vehicles on a self-service basis and pay through mobile money or the Roam application.
“For nighttime charging, the price rate is Sh25 per kWh, while daytime charging is Sh40 per kWh,” Roam told the Business Daily.
Kenya Power has a special e-mobility tariff for EV charging to incentivise EV uptake; a lower off-peak rate of Sh8 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) and a higher peak rate of Sh16 per kWh.
Two-wheelers dominate Kenya’s EV update. Electric motorcycles and bicycles made up 95.2 percent (8,712 units) of the 9,144 EVs registered in Kenya as of last December, according to data from the Electric Mobility Association of Kenya (EMAK), an industry lobby group.
Electric buses, minibuses and cars make up a paltry 2.7 percent or 247 units of the total EVs, as a lack of adequate electric charging infrastructure and acquisition costs slows their uptake. As of last December, electric motorcycles alone accounted for seven percent of all new registrations for the units.
Official data from the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (Epra), however, puts the total EVs in Kenya at a lower figure of 6,442 units as of June this year. Still, the number of EV charging stations across the country stands at a meagre 300.
EV companies have been partnering with local oil marketing companies like TotalEnergies to expand their DC charging station networks by setting up charging points at gas stations, avoiding the extra costs of setting up standalone charging stations.
Roam, one of the country’s pioneer EV companies, says it has put 3,500 electric motorbikes on the road since 2017.
The company plans to introduce a universal fast-charging station under such partnerships at each of Nairobi’s satellite towns, like Machakos, Thika, Kiambu and Kajiado in 2026.
The Kenyan electric bus and minivan assembler BasiGo has also been scaling its DC fast-charging network beyond Nairobi, where it has 10 points.
The company maintains Kenya’s largest electric bus fleet (82) and has set up charging points in Nyahururu and Kiambu over the past year.
In addition to the special power tariffs for EV charging, Kenya has also lowered excise duty on EVs from 20 percent to 10 percent and exempted them from Value Added Tax (VAT) to boost their uptake and lower carbon emissions.
The government also plans to invest $47.26 million (Sh6.12 billion) to install 10,000 charging stations across the country in three phases by 2030.
