French sustainability investor Mirova is providing ARC Ride, an electric mobility company from Kenya, with up to $10 million in the form of a loan. The deal will enable the Nairobi-based company to set up 600 battery exchange stations for electric motorcycles.
ARC Ride’s mission is to provide affordable, reliable and clean electric mobility solutions for fast-growing African cities. In doing so, ARC Ride aims to become the leading provider of Battery-as-a-Service (BaaS) infrastructure for electric two- and three-wheeled vehicles in Africa. In other words, its business model primarily consists of renting batteries to motorbike and tricycle riders, while also enabling quick battery replacement at its own battery exchange stations.
The ARC Ride ecosystem consists of two different electric motorcycles: the Bidii Boda with 5.1 kW motor power, a top speed of 90 kph and a range of 85 kilometres, and the Corbett with 1.2 kW motor power, a top speed of 60 kph and a range of 60 kilometres. In addition, there are LFP batteries with a capacity of 1.44 kWh, whereby the Bidii Boda can be equipped with two such batteries and the Corbett with one battery. The batteries can be exchanged for fresh ones at any time at battery exchange stations in Nairobi. There is also a matching app for this.
With the globally active pizza delivery service Domino’s Pizza, ARC Ride already has a prominent partner in Nairobi that uses the company’s electric motorcycles for deliveries and, of course, also uses the battery exchange system. Apparently, the e-motorcycles are also used by drivers of Uber Boda, a motorcycle taxi service from Uber specifically for Kenya. This is suggested by a photo of an ARC Ride electric motorcycle labelled ‘Uber’ in a trade article.
In Kenya, electric motorcycle riders, often gig workers with low incomes, benefit from lower operating costs and savings on fuel and maintenance, which have both positive environmental and economic impacts.
ARC Ride was founded in 2019 by British entrepreneur Joseph Hurst-Croft. He says: “This partnership with Mirova marks a major milestone in our mission to make electric mobility accessible, affordable, and sustainable across Africa. With Mirova’s support, we’re not only scaling our operations in Kenya, we are laying the groundwork for a cleaner transport future across wider regions in Africa.”
Rim Azirar of Mirova added: “This investment reflects Mirova’s mission to support innovative, high-impact climate solutions in emerging markets. ARC Ride is redefining urban mobility in Africa through a scalable model that reduces emissions and improves livelihoods. We’re proud to support their journey.”
Kenya has ambitious plans in the field of electric motorcycles: in 2023, the East African country announced that it wanted to put around 100,000 electric motorcycles and electric tuk-tuks on the roads by 2029 as part of a project run by the Kenyan bank KCB in collaboration with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). This was followed by a collaboration between the Kenyan government and electric motorcycle manufacturer Spiro with the aim of putting more than one million of its electric motorcycles on the roads in Kenya and setting up 3,000 battery exchange stations.
mirova.com
