Start with a 90-day pilot
Companies that succeed at fleet electrification rarely convert everything at once. They pick five to ten of their highest-mileage urban routes, run them electric for 90 days alongside the existing petrol fleet, and measure everything.
Ninety days is long enough to capture rain, peak season and real rider behaviour, and short enough that finance teams will approve it as an operating expense rather than a capital project.
Design charging around depots, not highways
Urban delivery and staff fleets almost always return to a depot. That makes depot charging the cheapest and simplest solution: a bank of standard chargers overnight, plus a swap rack for bikes that need to keep running through peak hours.
Estimate capacity at roughly 1 kWh per bike per full charge, and check with your landlord or property manager early — electrical capacity, not vehicle supply, is the usual bottleneck.
Finance the fleet from the fuel budget
The strongest business case is not a capital request. It is a swap: the existing monthly fuel and maintenance line pays for a lease that covers the bike, battery, tracking, servicing and insurance.
Most of our fleet clients structure this as a per-rider monthly fee, which keeps the accounting simple and makes scaling a matter of adding rider lines rather than approving new capital.
Measure four things
Cost per kilometre, uptime percentage, energy consumption per bike per day, and CO2 avoided. Those four numbers answer every question a finance director, an operations manager and a sustainability lead will ask.
GPS tracking makes the first three automatic. The fourth follows from your kilometres and your grid mix — and in Kenya, where the grid is predominantly renewable, the emissions result is unusually strong.
Plan for riders, not just machines
The commonest cause of a failed pilot is rider adoption, not technology. Budget half a day of training per rider, explain charging etiquette clearly, and appoint a champion within the rider group.
Riders who understand range management and charging habits deliver far better results than riders who are simply handed a new bike on a Monday morning.
Then scale
Once the pilot data holds, scaling is straightforward: extend the same lease structure, add depot charging capacity in blocks, and phase petrol units out as they reach end of life rather than writing them off early.
Talk to our fleet team about a structured pilot for your organisation, including tracking, servicing SLAs and a reporting pack for your sustainability disclosures.
Talk to our Nairobi team
Book a test ride, request a fleet quote or ask about financing — we respond within one business day.
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