State working on policies, strategies to boost e-Mobility uptake

The government is working on policies and strategies to guide the introduction of electric mobility, Michael Muchiri, a member of the taskforce has said.

This involves electric vehicles, motorcycles and bicycles as a way of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and reducing the use of fossil fuels in line with the Paris Agreement 2015.

He was speaking during a public participation forum held at the Garissa government guest house.

Muchiri said that the policy will also seek to address some of the challenges faced currently in the sector which is slowly picking up.

The draft national e-mobility policy, 2024, will further seek to promote local manufacturing and assembly of Electric Vehicles, develop and enhance e-mobility infrastructural and technical capacity among others.

“There have been challenges especially in terms of the distance an electric vehicle or motor bike can cover per charge and the time for fast charging which is about two hours," Muchiri said.

"However, this is a new technology and new improvements are being made every day like for example, today you don’t need to wait for two hours to charge your motorcycle battery, you just need to swap with a fully charged one and continue with your business,” Muchiri said.

“For vehicles, the researchers are working on ways to increase the distance covered by a single charge from 200 kilometers to 500 kilometers. This will help our people to easily embrace the technology and buy more EVs,” he added.

Muchiri further said the Ministry of Energy and the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (Epra) will introduce a special tariff for owners of electric vehicles which will be cheaper to enable them to cut charging costs.

On the affordability of the electric vehicles, Muchiri said although the vehicles are almost two times the cost of the normal fuel vehicles, as the technology improves and more production is done, the cost will eventually drop.

“Currently we have a total of close to 4,000 electric mobility vehicles and motorcycles in the country. Having a reduced tariff for these owners is a part of the strategy to increase the uptake of the Electric Mobility and go green,” he said.

Garissa county director for Environment, Mulki Mohamed, welcomed the draft recommendations and called on the government to find a way to enable the Garissa solar power plant, which is largest in east and central Africa to be used locally in Garissa.

Mulki said the solar power produced there is enough to enable the state to set up charging stations in Garissa and help the people to acquire more electric vehicles.

She, however, called on the government to work on constructing more roads in Garissa especially those connecting subcounties to ensure smooth movement of electric vehicles since without proper roads, they are likely to be damaged.

Maxwell Otieno, Garissa county boda boda association chairperson, said that although they have not received any electric bikes in the county, once charging stations are fully constructed, they would be willing to venture into the electric motor cycles which will help them cut operation costs.