MADE IN KENYA: University lecturer making electric batteries for e-vehicles

Through his venture Ecomobilus, Gitau and his team embarked on more research and came up with the idea of converting fuel powered vehicles into electric. Also, Ecomobilus is able to re-engineer electric vehicles to suit the local requirements.

"We got into e-mobility because of the challenges people who were importing electric vehicles were facing, particularly the problem with the battery. When the battery starts developing issues people don’t know what to do. So we started making the initial batteries from cells collected from local sources, and one of them was to use batteries recovered from laptops and so forth," Gitau said.

So how does the conversion work? Paul Waweru, the co-founder of Ecomobilus, explains.

"E-mobility works by 3 things; the battery that stores the energy like the petrol tank, the motor which turns the wheel like the engine, and the controller which is like the accelerator. So we arrange the cells and then we spot-weld them, connecting them in a way that we can form a stack. For vehicles we lay them on the floor so that centre of gravity can be as low as possible. Here we also do our quality checks."

Ecomobilus is now embracing solar technology to add at least 30% of power to the electric vehicles. Gitau says so far they have received several orders from bodaboda operators looking to convert their motorcycles into electric, and he is now setting up a charging station along the Eastern Bypass to enable charging of the batteries. 

Working with research institutions such as Murang’a University, Ecomobilus is now helping develop a curriculum for e-mobility to be taught in institutions, and the venture looks forward to fully making electric vehicles from scratch. 

"lity. We believe that here in Kenya we are going to become the Tesla because we believe in developing localised, homegrown solutions in e-mobility," Gitau concluded.