In several African nations, a new business is providing a battery swap service for electric motorcycles: Africa Climate Summit: Electric motorcycle startup Spiro expands into Kenya | CNN
Rather than recharging electric motorcycle batteries, operators can pull into a Spiro battery swap station and quickly remove the discharged battery and install a new fully charged battery. The process takes 2-3 minutes. Currently, the swaps are handled by an onsite swap-station technician but eventually this will be a process that end users can do on their own. This is a very nice concept and appears to be well implemented.
This story notes an issue most Americans do not think about – currently, thousands of used, older ICE vehicles are shipped from the U.S. and sold in Africa as affordable access to cars. As Americans purchase EVs, there will eventually be a large surplus of used gas vehicles in the U.S. – and already, this surplus is shipped to other countries where a ten year old gas vehicle with 100,000 miles is viewed as a great deal and opportunity to buy a car that would otherwise be unaffordable in local economies of many developing nations. The net reduction in carbon emissions from Americans switching to EVs is not large, for many reasons, and this is one of them.
This is a real issue:
McKinsey warns that with increased demand, second-hand motorized vehicles that don’t meet emission standards in other countries around the world might end up being sold in Africa, where there is weak regulation. To avoid the continent becoming a “dumping ground” for unwanted polluting vehicles, enabling affordable and reliable electrification will be key, it says.
