Spiro Deploys 500 Electric Motorcycles in Uganda In One Day! – CleanTechnica

---

---

This has probably got to be the largest rollout of electric motorcycles in Africa in a single day! And Spiro followed this up by deploying another 300 bikes the following day and another 150 bikes a few days later. They will now ramp up to deploy at least 175 to 200 motorcycles per day.

Gaurav Anand, Country Head for Spiro in Uganda, Ethiopia and South Sudan, has been working in the automotive sector in Africa for over 10 years. 8 of those years have been in the Ugandan motorcycle sector, so he knows the market very well. He joined Spiro about 2 years ago to set up Spiro Uganda and help lead the transition to electricity in Uganda’s motorcycle sector. The Ugandan economy is probably one of the economies in Africa where dependence on motorcycles is very high. The motorcycle industry is the second largest employer in Uganda after agriculture. It is quite common for some people in Uganda to sell land to buy motorcycles for commercial operations. Even graduates from universities and colleges pursue careers as boda boda riders. Some parents save money to buy motorcycles for their children to start boda boda operations. After school.

All of this has been driving demand for motorcycles in Uganda over the years. In 2024, about 10,000 to 12,000 motorcycles were sold per month in Uganda. These were mostly ICE (internal combustion engine) motorcycles. Things slowed down a bit in early 2025 to about 8,000 new motorcycle sales per month. This has been attributed to the newly increased registration costs that led to the pricing of bikes going up by $200 to $300. One of the new measures introduced that contributed to this was the introduction of the new digital number plate for all new vehicles in Uganda. Growth in Uganda’s motorcycle industry has been driven by established and accessible financing programmes. One can pay a small down payment and then the balance can be paid through daily, weekly or monthly installments over a 24-month period. Usually, after the 24 months, riders will use the bike for another year and a half or so, and then sell it off, and then get finance for a brand new bike again. Some sell the bikes and buy a small piece of land and use the remaining amount as down payment for a new bike. This loop feeds the new bike sales market, as the same riders will buy a brand new bike every 4 years or so, along with new entrants into the boda boda industry.

When Spiro entered the Ugandan market, the strategy was not to reinvent the wheel but to leverage the existing ecosystem, focusing on the channels the boda boda riders had become accustomed to. Therefore, Spiro’s main route-to-market strategy was not to overdose riders with flyers and business cases of the advantages of electric bikes over the traditional fossil fueled bikes they had been used to, but to give riders first-hand experience with the Spiro electric bikes and let them experience them for themselves and see the impact of savings on their operations using these same traditional financing channels. Spiro carried out test rides and pilots for about a year before launching full commercial operations in June 2024. The riders would then share their personal experiences with Spiro bikes in their communities and networks, driving organic adoption through peer validation.

To improve the overall customer experience, the strategy was to launch with enough infrastructure to support operations, and hence Spiro Uganda had already set up 22 battery swap stations by the time they launched full commercial operations. Since June 2024, Spiro says the market has responded very well, and now Spiro has a super aggressive internal target for Uganda, which is to deploy 50,000 electric bikes in Uganda in 2025! Spiro says there are already confirmed orders of 30,000 electric bikes in Uganda. If we use 10,000 bikes sold per month in Uganda, that would be 120,000 in a year — so the 50,000 target from Spiro would mean about 42% of all new registrations of motorcycles in Uganda would be electric should they meet that target this year. Imagine that! Even if we just use the number of confirmed orders (30,000), that would mean 25%! This would be just from Spiro alone, excluding other players in the market. Spiro’s country head says they are working hard to ensure the target of 50,000 units is met. Whichever way you look at it, things are moving fast in Uganda’s electric motorcycle industry.

One of the channels Spiro is using to accelerate adoption is to partner with industry bodies such as Union. Through Union, boda riders can get financing at lower interest rates than the other traditional channels. Spiro has now partnered with Union to deploy 10,000 bikes over the next 5 to 6 months. At the launch of this partnership, Spiro deployed 500 electric motorcycles in one day! This has probably got to be the largest rollout of electric motorcycles in Africa in a single day! Spiro followed this up by deploying another 300 bikes the following day and another 150 bikes a few days later. They will now ramp up to deploy at least 175 to 200 motorcycles per day. To put this into perspective, there were about 2,500 electric motorcycles registered in Uganda in all of 2024. That means 2025 is going to see a big jump in electric motorcycle adoption in Uganda.

Let’s look at another large market for motorcycles — Kenya. There were 366 new electric motorcycles registered in Kenya in 2022, meaning in one day Spiro delivered more electric motorcycles in Uganda than the total number of motorcycles delivered by all players in Kenya in 2022! There were 4862 electric motorcycles registered in Kenya last year, and Spiro has already received confirmed orders for 6 times this number in Uganda alone. This shows us that things are now moving a whole lot faster in East Africa’s electric motorcycle sector and that the transition to electric is well underway!

Spiro now has 105 battery swap stations in Uganda, 65 of these in Greater Uganda where riders can comfortably find swap stations every 3 km or so. Spiro now has a presence across almost all of Uganda, with a prominent presence in Greater Kampala, Wakisin, Mukono, Jinja , Mbarara, Masaka, Fort Portal, Gulu ,Lira, Iganga, and Mbale.

Images courtesy of Spiro