Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Training and Assembly Workshop at DIT in November 2022

As of December 2022, Auto Truck E.A. Limited’s two new electric three- wheeled vehicles were 85% complete, with a launch planned for the first quarter of 2023. Auto Truck secured strong local anchorage through partnership with the Dar Institute of Technology (DIT), to assemble the vehicles at DIT, train DIT engineering students and charge the vehicles at DIT during a three-month testing period, before deploying near a BRT station. Auto Truck integrates locally available materials to the strongest extent 68 possible; components not locally available were procured by Auto Truck’s partner KNS Enterprise in May 2022. Designs for the fleet application management system have been developed with the Kenyan branch of the hardware supplier Teltonika, a company based in Lithuania.

The second component is the conversion of internal combustion engine (ICE) three-wheeled vehicles. In May 2022, Auto Truck purchased one ICE three- wheeled vehicle and redesigned the transmission system. Another company, SESCOM, was selected to retrofit three (3) three-wheeled vehicles. SESCOM benefitted from ad-hoc technical support on the retrofitting methodology from the Germany-based company PEM Motion (June-October 2022) selected through the SOLUTIONSplus EU matchmaking call, via the IDIADA training on battery sizing in May 2022, and via on-site technical cooperation with Auto Truck and DIT. SESCOM plans to test the vehicles in the first quarter of 2023.

To ensure that the specifications of the electric three-wheeled vehicles and charging infrastructure are compatible with operations of three-wheelers and drivers’ expectations, substantial data were collected in the first semester of 2022. GPS tracking identified typical daily mileages; survey of drivers enabled identifying key operational and financial patterns for innovators to pick adapted charging, operational and business strategies. The resulting report paves the way for a further call for innovators in 2023 to increase the fleet.

In July 2022, SOLUTIONSplus organised a peer-to-peer exchange on electric three-wheelers for passenger services between the cities of Kochi (India), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), and Kigali (Rwanda).

During the first round of EU matchmaking call in the last quarter of 2021, the Germany-based organisation EURIST was selected to introduce pedal-assist electric bicycles in Dar es Salaam, where such vehicles were not present yet.

In the first semester of 2022, the SOLUTIONSplus team in Dar es Salaam collectively mapped needs and stakeholders, which led to the identification of urban deliveries as the most promising use case for the e-bikes. 16 e-bikes and 5 additional batteries were shipped in October 2022. Between the 22nd and 24th of November 2022, a training and assembly workshop was held at the Dar Institute of Technology (DIT), training DIT staff, students and cyclists of the cooperative FASTA on the assembly and use of e-bikes.
The e-bikes are currently used for urban deliveries, in particular to transport medical supplies on behalf of the Aga Khan Health Services (Hospital), a major stakeholder in several East African countries, hence with significant scale-up potential.

This paves the way for an evaluation mid-2023, alongside a prefeasibility study to scale up the use of e-bikes for urban deliveries in Dar es Salaam and the East African region. Market opportunities are identified, as shown by the creation of the German organisation EURIST of a company, the African Ebike Trading GmbH.