Since the company is taking on the risk of charging and maintaining the buses, their business model shows confidence in the lower running costs of electric vehicles.

Good for them! Clean air is good for the planet and people’s health

[removed]

[removed]

[removed]

[removed]

These would be a vast improvement over the matatu that are everywhere

Got a pretty decent geothermal energy system to charge them with too

This is something all developing countries will discover: electric vehicles are much less complex machines and can be built with a far smaller capital expenditure and technology transfer.

This won't happen in the immediate future because almost every Li-ion cell produced right now is spoken for. However, once there's a glut of cells in the mid-20s, there will be free for all for all adventurous businessmen to start EV assembly. Quite similar to what we saw in the 2014-2017 era when all the cells weren't scooped up by the Teslas and BYDs.

[removed]

It’s literally golf cart technology. Wanna piss off a conservative? Just talk about golf cart technology used on a larger vehicle. It melts their minds. Why not have an electric bus?

[removed]

These are literally BYD bus kits assembled in Kenya. The funding for the plant is Chinese, the owners are seemingly Chinese. This smells a lot like a B&R initiative.

there will be bigger demand for batteries in mid-20s as north american,european and east asian markets going for more electric vehicles and 30s might be even worse- by 2035 there will be ban on non-electric cars sales in EU, lithium prices will skyrocket

https://medium.com/prime-movers-lab/does-the-u-s-have-enough-lithium-to-support-the-growing-ev-market-d73a44a969e5

only from 2021price of lithium went up 4x, not sure there will be ever glut of cells, africans with their low purchasing power wont be able to compete with developed countries easily

Rift valley?

I first misread the thread title as “Kanye producing his first electronic album”

Not gonna lie. Got kind of excited

I thought Kanye was producing electric buses when I scrolled past

[removed]

Bro what the fuck are you talking about. China doing something doesn't make it bad.

Parts are definitely BYD Auto, but BasiGo funding appears to be a mix of Silicon Valley, Japan, and some African VCs. Where are you getting it's from China?

Me too. I need to go to bed

This is why you build catenaries and overhead lines and have small or no batteries.

Not every battery is lithium ion. Cheap cars for poor countries will use cheap batteries.

Nope, more and more Lithium mines are set to begin production in the next few years. That 4x price had a huge impact on the investment environment of Lithium mining. There will be a glut, especially with China's economy taking a major hit.

That's called a train/tram and I am a big proponent. Wherever feasible, we should have more trains.

Was thinking the same based on the pictures from their website, then realised this is a company already working with existing buses and now going to make their own. And yeah, I can imagine that they don't make everything themselves, no car manufacturer in the world does that.

[deleted]

If all else remained the same, how would global warming change if every automobile was electric?

No, it’s called a trolleybus - fit it with a little battery for emergencies and you’ve got yourself the most flexible and efficient option out there.

It's a trolleybus, used to be quiet common until the late sixties but most systems then got removed. Some still survive, maybe hybrid solutions could make a comeback I don't know why they went out of use, probably lack of flexibility. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_trolleybus_systems_in_the_United_Kingdom

And not being sued into oblivion when some of them start blowing up.

Edit: People actually believe that no electric busses produced in 3rd world countries won't blow up (laughing in standards and regulations). Whether people like it or not, these busses will be more likely to catch fire than those produced in 1st-world countries. I have no doubt in my mind that this company knows this and it is factored into their business plan.

That's not going to work in most places in Africa as it would mean a lot of investment in infrastructure by the government and also high ongoing maintenance costs.

This solution uses the same roads as everyone else and is much easier to roll-out, and does not require a massive upfront investment to be useful.

Ahem Puts on tinfoil hat well you see..

Roads, famously, are not infrastructure and require no maintenance.

The issue with that is that that's out of the hand of the company. For that you need infrastructure, so the cities have to pitch in.

It might be a better system, but it's probably harder to convince municipalities.

They're not Teslas.

I made I quick search on the internet. Apparently cars, vans, buses and trucks account for 20% of carbon global emissions. If they were all electric, there would still produce some CO2, but from what I have read, it would account for somewhere between 6 to 8% of the global emissions today, and it will be less if we use more renewable energies to produce electricity, so we can expect that number to be lower in the future.

That wouldn't be enough to stop global warming completely, but the difference is huge.

Yes I agree that more economic planning would improve things.

[deleted]

Imagine a road with a pothole vs a train track with eroded ballast lol.

Or a road with a pothole vs the copper being stolen from an overhead line lol.

One does seem bit more resilent than the other hahaha.

Or, you know, you can be realistic when proposing solutions.

[deleted]

true but what cheap viable alternative for vehicles do you have in mind?

Tesla's actually have a lesser chance of exploding, American and European (Japan, AU, & NZ included) countries have very high standards compared to the rest of the world. The fact that it happens, even with higher standards, means that there is a tenfold chance that it will happen elsewhere. If the Kenyan justice system was stronger on big business, you wouldn't see this deal happening.

I will defend Tesla when it comes to things like this. Musk didn't create Tesla nor did he design anything for them, thousands of brilliant engineers created Tesla. I'm not saying or suggesting that you should buy a Tesla, because you shouldn't but only because Musk is the CEO and signs off on things that quite ready yet

yes there will be more mines that doesnt mean lithium will be cheap with ever rising demand, most of avalable deposits are in dry regions and you need lot of water to process lithium, there might big major shortage of available lithium by 2025

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/electric-vehicles-world-enough-lithium-resources/

china too has plans for EVs- as of 2035, 50% of new cars sold in the country will be either electric, plug-in hybrid, or fuel cell vehicles, and 50% of new cars will be conventional hybrids, which still run entirely on gasoline.

I doubt that batteries will be particularly cheap in coming years, china economy is slowing down but it will still have hefty 4% growth

Sure building buses with batteries that are not possible to procure is much more realistic than implementing a system which has been used globally for something like a century.

[removed]

So we did not built 10 million EVs last year, right. That's fantasy as it's "impossible to procure" batteries.

What universe do you live in again?

The science has been out for a while, catch up. Gas cars are 10x more likely to catch fire than electric vehicles. And hybrids are 20x as likely to catch fires as electric.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/oct/25/instagram-posts/batteries-dont-make-electric-vehicles-more-likely/

I encourage you to read upthread for the context of my first post.

This thing overtook me on Mombasa Road earlier this Jan. LOL. It picks speed fast from a stand still. And it was way quieter than I've been accustomed to hearing from diesel matatu engines.

Most of the major auto manufacturers are investing heavily in NonLithium power banks and more efficient forms of storage.

Corporate speak.

Diesel engines in developing companies aren't complex, labor is cheap and emissions isn't a concern. The real issue is electric grid vs. diesel price. Chances are diesel is more affordable and available.

> most flexible

Well you still need the overhead lines in place. But fit it with medium-sized batteries, and you could probably get away with having overhead lines only on some sections of the route network.

Did you respond to the wrong comment? I am well aware that electric cars explode much less commonly than gas-powered ones.

I agree that building and maintaining infrastructure is harder in a country that has been (and is still being) continually looted by (primarily western) capital for the last century or so.

> you need lot of water to process lithium,

This bit is just a big lie. That water is due to evaporative extraction of lithium from brine, and it is just salty water which is useless in any case.

Dont fall for the propaganda. Evaporative extraction is the most environmentally friendly since it uses the sun to do most of the hard work.

> china too has plans for EVs- as of 2035, 50% of new cars sold in the country will be either electric, plug-in hybrid, or fuel cell vehicles,

It's already 30%, so in theory demand will only double. Actually it will hit 90% soon, but that again is only 3x as much.

>Tesla's actually have a lesser chance of exploding

Could you cite this?

Sodium batteries. Half the cost, but bulkier.

The watermelon sheds his skin.

[removed]

Emissions are not a concern? Are you living in Mars already?

[removed]

I can only cite sources that wouldn't give a definitive result. There simply aren't enough EV's in the US or Europe on the road to give comprehensive is one better than the other when it comes to manufactures in the US, but I never argued that. EV fires are less likely to happen than ice vehicles.

Manufacturer BYD, the leading electric vehicle manufacturer, is involved in the largest number of episodes.

Edit: formatting

I read this too quickly and questioned why Kanye was building electric buses.

It's in Africa so it must be a" third world country". I'm guessing someone using that boomer language has never seen Nairobi. No one is taking those electric buses on Safari.

However this is perfect for buses. That cost being split by 50 riders at a time or exported. Kenya would be one of the cheapest places to import from with a weaker currency.

A lot of the regulatory capture and verticals are BYD or Chinese. Even the Nairobi-Mombassa Railway is majority chinese rolling stock.

Great to see no one is reading the article again. This is a terrific business model. Pay per mile/kilometer is really smart. The upfront costs of a 400k bus are untenable for most markets or municipal budgets.

This way they see a return sooner and allow for roll out over time. Securing the market while assuming much more of the risk. While charging the same cost per mile as a diesel bus they are arbitraging the difference with the more affordable cost per mile of an electric bus.

[removed]

[removed]

My point of argument is that the article makes it appear as if it's some new company that starts building busses. This is just a assembly line for putting BYD buses together.

I'm a bit confused with what's really going on as the founder seems to be Indian, but this isn't some company that designed it's own platform, started buying various parts and possibly even design some, and put a bus together. This is just a bus-kit being put together. They could just have bought and imported them straight to Kenya, lots of countries are doing that.

They have a company in the greater Toronto (Canada) area making some. I interviewed but it wasnt close to the job I was looking for

America a country of (checks notes) 330 million, has a total of (checks notes)1500 Electric buses(checks notes again, that can't be right. It is yikes) ever.

While Kenya a country of (checks notes) 53 million, is adding a thousand in the next year.

We're nailing this whole being the "best" country in the world thing

There won’t be a glut in the mid 20’s. Mid 30’s yes but not mid 20’s. We’ve only electrified 5% of the worlds yearly auto production. Glut will happen when we’re approaching 95%.

Have you been to a developing country? Be glad it's not coal-powered. Public transportation is still loads better than a Prius commuter.

I've lived all my life in India. Do you know what an idling diesel engine spews out? Huge amounts of particulate matter, NOx, CO, not to mention the CO2 that's boiling our planet.

I watched a documentary on bus assembly in the UK. We use Chinese chassis here too. The bus is completely drivable when it arrives. All we do is add the big red frame and the seats.

And what percentage of global co2 emissions are man made? I’ve read that it’s less than 5%, so that would mean that automobiles make up around .01% of global co2 emissions.

[removed]

> We’ve only electrified 5% of the worlds yearly auto production

Probably closer to 10%.

Who makes the other 95% of CO2 emissions? Aliens?

YEAH, thats whay they need. Not food, shelter, and help from the Satan Klaus' frickin' Rescrew! I have a friend there. Food is a real problem. The elites are squeezing the world. Electric "f$^#@* " buses!!?? God help us!

The batteries will fail, corrode, and burn within weeks of introduction. Just ss the idiots in Cali saw. BATTERIES ARE NOT THE ANSWER. MOST OF THESE PPL are on a very fragile grid, some blackouts, some dont have access, but leave it to the enviro- Malthusian/Marxist to use this to kerp them down. I got to hand it to tbe Commies. They found a back door to control. The world is in great peril. Fuel cells that use all available hydrocarbons, hydrogen, nat gas, etc , THATVIS THE ANSWER. Before running busses, how about letting these people get into the 20th C.?! Always talk about how black and brown ppl are held back. Who is doing the holding?

Which copy pasta is this lmao

Wrong, this isnt an answer in the developed wotld, let alone here. This is a way of keeping people down and under control. Nobody gives a tinkers damn about letting these nations, full of corruption bc of the Wests meddling and the IMF not allowing Africans to run their own destinys. I grow so tired of liberals telling who, what, how. The US grid cant handle elect battery trans. and they KNOW IT. You can't displace 1 million btus of energy from gssoline and diesel replaced with batteries? Its a pipe- nightmare Liberals cant do math or economics. Just add up all personal transport , and the btus required. The renewables arent even close. I dont want to hear the arguements. They are ridiculous. CO2, CO2, CO2, CO2, CO2,C O FRICKIN' 2!! Its a gas!!. Its apart of living processes. It rises and falls! Over eons, millenia, centuries. Ice cores prove the OPPOSITE of the so called Al Gore " BOILING OCEANS!!!", spittal included. He spews this shit, then hops on ONE OF HIS JETS. The GORE'S entire fortune came from????.........OCCIDENTAL PETROLEUM. While you take a cold shower, he will be in his big fat hot tub with his whores!! People like me are sick of this shit and we are not taking it anymore. These psychotics will NOT RUN MY LIFE. I say, if u want to live with 1 square of T paper lime Sheryl Crowe, fine, dont ask me to. When I see Diaper Joe, Al, Nancy, AOC, ET. AL. riding bikes to and from their meetings and rowing, Sailing across the ocean, then I might be convinced. Hydrogen & all hydrocarbon fuel cells can be an answer to much greater efficiencies, but thats not the goal. The goal is keeping me in the walls, 15 min limit to my travel. CONTROL, WAKE UP, ITS CONTROL OF MY AND YOUR SOULS! This is EVIL. Tesla will be like the Netscape browser was 25 yrs ago. Old, tired. Elon will sell it. It has raked in billions in govt mobey from incentives. Its a boutique toy for the rich at best. A real H2 tech is out and is hardly noticed. Everyone is worried about WHERE hydrogen comes from, but they dobt worry about the poor, children mining lithium in Africa with sticks in mud and being poisoned. Europe wants Biodiesel. It comes from palm oil, cut down native forests to grow. Mon crop kills the soil, exploits workers, yet, libs , rich in the West say, Oh, Im Enviromental. Just cut the enviro, and you get what they REALLY ARE

Are you a Chi comm telling about capitalism?

Whatever, I don't speak foolese.

[removed]

Nickel or even lead acid for very low range, low cost batteries until something else comes along. Difference use cases will have different solutions.

[removed]

What does this got to do with anything? Kenya's public transport is private owned.

Because it was the answer to their question.