How to Make Transportation Quieter, Cleaner and Cheaper | Doreen Orishaba | TED

When you sit in your car or any car,

do you ever wonder how many parts that car is made of?

Anyone?

Oh, great.

Do you also ever wonder

what does it really take to put all this together?

Anyone?

Oh, great.

Now let me get to it.

How many of you have ever built a car from scratch?

Oh, great, good to see you.

Absolutely.

And I’m also honored to say that I have,

an electric one at that.

Growing up as a follower of four boys

earned me an early ticket

to the fascinating world of speed and cars.

There's something thrilling, something very powerful about, you know,

the vehicles, the elegance of the design,

the engineering, putting it all together.

But what really excites me the most today

is the future of mobility.

Electric mobility.

I was first introduced to the electric vehicle world

during my time as a student

at Makerere University.

Kiira Motors of Uganda

was the very first company on this continent

to dream beyond fuel.

In 2011, Kiira Motors built Africa's very first electric car.

Doesn't it look great?

And this is at a time

when the rest of Africa was not paying any attention whatsoever

to the electric vehicle space,

or even the urgency of addressing the climate crisis.

I was privileged to join this team,

and we moved on to produce Africa's very first

plug-in hybrid electric vehicle.

Would you buy that?

Audience: Yes.

Doreen Orishaba: Great.

And we also proceeded to build

Africa's first solar electric bus prototype.

(Applause)

As you can imagine, at that time,

we’re talking about more than 10 years ago,

some people used to think

maybe this electric vehicle stuff,

these are toys for the Western world.

But for us, we were driven by the vision

that Africa should contribute to the future of electric mobility

and not just be a consumer.

Electric buses are now a very prime opportunity.

Buses are the lifeline in African cities,

moving over 60 percent of the population every single day.

And public transport in most of the regions in Africa,

it's led by the private sector.

So we have electric mobility start-ups

that are driving, really, the vision of electric buses.

This is happening here in Kenya, in Rwanda, in Nigeria.

But at the end of the day, despite all these efforts,

scaling electric mobility is facing huge challenges.

Talk of range anxiety,

the high upfront cost of electric vehicles

and limited charging infrastructure

is really slowing down the adoption of electric mobility.

But these challenges are not new.

They are the same hindrances that stopped the electric vehicle

from growing in the 1890s.

However, the times are different.

We cannot afford to wait.

The planet is telling us that we need to act really soon,

and we are proving that there is a way to overcome these challenges.

I am Doreen Orishaba,

the Managing Director of BasiGo, Rwanda.

At BasiGo, we provide electric buses

as a cost-effective alternative to the diesel bus.

We started out here in Nairobi in 2022,

and we've scaled now into Rwanda

with now a total fleet of 77 buses between both countries.

And every single day,

we are enabling the commute of over 30,000 passengers between both countries.

(Applause)

Thank you.

We've built this by overcoming some of these challenges.

Number one, we are cheaper than diesel.

Electricity in both Kenya and Rwanda

is locally generated from renewables like hydro and wind.

That not only makes electricity much cheaper,

but also cleaner,

because remember that diesel is all imported here.

So electricity is cheaper, it's cleaner and it's more stable.

We design for the local needs.

Have you ever wondered what kind of specification do we need for the bus

to be deployed in any of these markets?

We do not make assumptions.

We pilot with a small fleet

and then scale based on the local needs.

We're getting an optimized battery capacities,

the suspension systems, the drive systems,

and make sure that at the end of the day,

we are using the real-life route data in order to scale.

I recall when we were doing the market survey in Rwanda,

one of the top questions that we always received was,

"Are you sure your electric bus will be able to handle Kigali's Hills?"

It's been 18 months now of our operation and that question is now history.

As you can see, the bus is able to go up that hill.

(Applause)

We equip our buses with high-torque motors for the steep inclines

and regenerative braking for the descent

to be able to harvest the energy back into the battery.

And then this boosts the efficiency of our buses

as well as minimizing the brake wear.

One thing that really excites me about our Nairobi fleet

is we are locally assembling these electric buses right here.

(Applause)

I hope each of you has had a chance to ride on the bus,

and we hope that you like it.

These buses have been built with lots of love and passion.

And you know, local assembly not only helps reduce the cost,

but we are enabling to build the critical local manufacturing capacity

on the planet

while also creating jobs.

At the end of the day,

it's going to be about, what can we all do together?

How do we handle the range anxiety?

We are building up charging infrastructure.

Let me ask you, what's your dream car?

Did you ever think about,

"Oh, now that I'm buying the car,

I also need to build a gas station for it."

Right?

No one ever thinks about that.

It should be no different for the electric vehicles.

As BasiGo, we go out and build the charging infrastructure,

we have a dedicated charging infrastructure team

that identifies and builds out the charging stations.

We handle all the permitting,

all the compliance requirements,

so that our partners do not have to do that.

And we've built stations

in strategically located places right near the bus routes.

At our stations, we're able to recharge our buses

in about one and a half to two hours,

removing this entire burden from the operators.

Think about service and maintenance.

We take this burden away from the operator as well.

You know, new technology can be intimidating, right?

Especially when there is no local available capacity

to be able to support that.

So as BasiGo, we have set up service centers in both Kenya and Rwanda,

fully equipped with trained staff, specialized tools,

as well as part inventory to minimize the downtime of these buses.

However, our biggest innovation is in the financing of these buses.

We provide the buses through a lease model

that we call Pay-As-You-Drive,

taking away the need for the operators to invest heavily at the start.

I've seen firsthand the transformation

that electric mobility is bringing to Kenya and Rwanda.

The smiles and the awe of the passengers as they experience the BasiGo bus.

A ride so quiet and yet so revolutionary.

The relief of the operators

being able to scale without being choked by the heavy bank loans.

But I'll be honest and say, is it a smooth ride?

Perhaps not.

We're experiencing different challenges,

right from product iteration to the flooding

that we recently faced here in Nairobi,

which is a direct threat to our operation

because of where our batteries are placed.

But then it's a reminder

of why we are doing this.

Climate change.

And I'll be honest and say,

at the end of the day,

we wouldn't trade those experiences for anything else.

It is what's bringing us together as a team.

Given where we are,

Africa really has the potential to be able to lead

in this electric-mobility movement across the globe.

Think about here in East Africa,

our electricity is over 90 percent renewable.

That means deploying an electric vehicle here

has much greater impact than anywhere else in the world.

One of our electric buses replacing a diesel bus

enables the mitigation of up to 50 tonnes of CO2

every single year.

That is five times more

than what the Tesla is able to mitigate in California.

And what is that speaking to?

Africa has already proven that, you know,

we are able to lead in electric vehicle mobility.

We do not have to follow the path of fossil fuel that we followed before.

We don’t have to catch up on the electric vehicle mobility movement.

We can actually lead this.

So far, we have proven that, you know, zero-carbon transport is possible.

It's viable here in Africa with the greatest environmental impact,

with greater social impact

and with no government subsidy.

(Applause)