How to make transportation quieter, cleaner and cheaper | Doreen Orishaba

0:03You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. When Doreen Orishaba helped build Africa's first electric car in 2011, skeptics dismissed it as toys for the Western world. Now she's running dozens of electric buses across Kenya and Rwanda, moving tens of thousands of passengers to work every day.

0:29Doreen Orishaba: Buses are the lifeline in African cities, moving over 60 % of the population every single day. She breaks down what it actually takes to scale clean transport in Africa without subsidies, and why skipping the diesel detour is closer than most people think. Africa has already proven that we are able to lead in the electric vehicle mobility. We do not have to follow the path of fossil fuel that we followed before. we can actually lead this. That's coming up right after a short break.

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3:52And now, our TED Talk of the day.

3:55Doreen Orishaba: When you sit in your car or any car, do you ever wonder how many parts that car is made of? Do you also ever wonder, what does it really take to put all this together? Anyone? 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, I'll meet 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.

4:44Doreen Orishaba: 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 Makere University. Kira Motors of Uganda was the very first company on this continent to dream beyond fuel.

5:09Doreen Orishaba: In 2011, Kiramotos built Africa's very first electric car. 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. And we also proceeded to build Africa's first solar electric bus prototype.

5:43Doreen Orishaba: 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 startups that are driving really the vision of electric buses.

6:30Doreen Orishaba: 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, you know, 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.

7:19Doreen Orishaba: I am Doreen Orishaba, the managing director of Busy Go Rwanda. At Busy Go, 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're enabling the commute of over 30 ,000 passengers between both countries.

7:52Thank you.

7:54Doreen Orishaba: 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 renewable, 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.

8:41Doreen Orishaba: We get in and optimize the 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. 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.

9:31Doreen Orishaba: One thing that really excites me about our Nairobi fleet is we are locally assembling these electric buses right here. 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?

10:19Doreen Orishaba: Right? No one ever thinks about that. It should be no different for the electric vehicles. As Busy go, 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.

10:59Doreen Orishaba: We take this burden away from the operator as well. You know, new technology can be intimidating, right? Especially when there's no local available capacity to be able to support that. So as Busy Go, we have set up service centers in both Kenya and Rwanda, fully equipped with trained staff, specialized tools, as well as parts 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 We 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 to Rwanda.

11:52Doreen Orishaba: The smiles and the awe of the passengers as they experience the bussigo 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 these experiences for anything else.

12:38Doreen Orishaba: 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 tons 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 we are able to lead in the electric vehicle mobility.

13:37Doreen Orishaba: 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 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.

14:12Doreen Orishaba: Africa definitely has the potential to be able to lead in some of these other sectors that were previously stated to be out of the reach for us. I hope you'll be on board as we make this a reality. Asante.

14:58Brian Green, Lucy Little, and Tonsika Sungmarnivong. This episode was mixed by Lucy Little. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Ballarezzo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

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