Why electric boda-bodas are taking over the market

By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

23 November 2025

Slowly and steadily, electric mobility is gaining popularity in Kenya. There are now several manufacturers assembling electric motorcycles here targeting the motorbike taxi (boda-boda) segment. As usual, these bikes run very smoothly and silently, but do they make economic sense?

Interestingly, the prices of e-bikes are comparable to those of the petrol-powered type. They vary from about Sh150,000 to Sh300,000 which is just Sh50,000 to Sh100,000 higher than the petrol ones. The only challenge that might be hindering mass adoption is availability of charging stations and the usual range anxiety.

Luckily, many models of e-bikes are designed for battery swapping, therefore, the rider doesn’t have to wait at the station for the battery to be recharged – they just swap the discharged one for a fully charged one in a process that takes less than three minutes. This costs about Sh200 and gives the rider about 80km to 100km. That works out to a running cost of Sh2 to Sh2.50 per km. Alternatively, the e-bike can be recharged at home where the cost drops dramatically to about one shilling per km.

By comparison, a typical 150cc petrol motorcycle runs for about 40km on a litre of fuel. That is, it needs about 2L to go for 80km. At the current price of Sh184, the total energy cost of an 80km-journey comes to Sh368 which is Sh4.6 per km. This is more than double what the electric bike costs.

What is the saving for a rider who does 100km daily? The electric bike will consume Sh250 of electricity while the petrol one will burn about Sh460 of fuel. The difference is Sh210. This is not a small amount. It come to about Sh60,000 in one year! In other words, the extra cost of buying an e-bike can be recovered within one year of operation. And the e-bike is charged at home most of the time, the revery time can be reduced by half to about 6 months!

In addition, service and maintenance costs are also significantly lower for electric bikes since they have much fewer moving parts. So, with all these benefits, why haven’t e-bikes taken over the industry?

It has to do with numbers: there are at least 2 million motorcycles on Kenyan roads (nobody knows the exact number, not even the registrar!). They cannot be replaced overnight. Indeed, the e-bike dealers are having a hard time meeting the demand. Nevertheless, it is just a matter of time before we start wondering what happened to petrol motorcycles.