Opibus was found­ed in 2017, just as elec­tric mobil­i­ty was tak­ing off and elec­tric cars were just appear­ing on our roads. Opibus’ vision is to make elec­tric mobil­i­ty acces­si­ble to a broad­er mar­ket by mak­ing the tech­nol­o­gy more cost-effec­tive and sim­pli­fy­ing deploy­ment. The com­pa­ny focus­es on all-elec­tric con­ver­sion kits for fleet vehi­cles such as light trucks, pub­lic trans­porta­tion and bus­es, as well as elec­tric motor­cy­cles and pow­er sys­tems. These focus areas were cho­sen to max­imise impact as these vehi­cles are among the high­est CO2 emit­ting vehi­cles on the mar­ket and rep­re­sent a large­ly untapped oppor­tu­ni­ty. This will set the stan­dard for elec­tric mobil­i­ty in Africa.

Opibus was found­ed as a research project at one of Swe­den’s top tech­ni­cal uni­ver­si­ties with the aim of intro­duc­ing elec­tric mobil­i­ty to emerg­ing mar­kets. This meant rethink­ing how the tech­nol­o­gy should be imple­ment­ed and how it should be deliv­ered. Kenya was cho­sen as the loca­tion for the head­quar­ters because it is the fastest grow­ing coun­try in sub-Saha­ran Africa. In Kenya, more and more used vehi­cles are being import­ed, which means that con­vert­ing to elec­tric dri­ve real­ly makes sense. Replac­ing com­bus­tion engines with elec­tric sys­tems, using the exist­ing chas­sis and imple­ment­ing proven tech­nol­o­gy cre­ates a cost-effec­tive sec­ond life for bus­es, trucks and fleet vehicles.