Here’s something that had us scratching our heads in slight confusion – Bolt is reportedly launching an electric vehicle option for South Africans.
This is according to TechCrunch, although we should say that we have not received official confirmation from Bolt itself that it intends to launch an EV service in a country that is currently beset with loadshedding. We have asked Bolt’s local representation to confirm the authenticity of this report and we will be sure to update this story should we hear back from the firm.
Back to the news though, Bolt’s regional director for Africa and the Middle East, Paddy Partridge, says, “We are looking to roll out a green taxi category in South Africa in the next few months, and plan to roll out green categories in other African markets”.
Those green categories include electric motorcycle deliveries in East Africa.
“In East Africa we see a lot of potential on the motorbike side, and especially for delivery. We plan to invest more in this direction as it also serves to eliminate the challenges associated with constantly fluctuating fuel prices, currently the most significant operating cost for our couriers,” Partridge adds.
While we agree that fluctuating fuel prices are problematic, we also need to point out that electricity isn’t really a constant either.
The other side of this is that electric vehicles are incredibly expensive with vehicles such as the BMW i3 and Mini Cooper SE fetching price tags of R754 200 and R658 000 respectively. Neither of those vehicles is what we’d describe as good for ride hailing services.
This means that if Bolt wants to start a push for electric vehicles it’s going to have to find a way to help drivers fund those vehicles. Furthermore, it’s also going to have to invest in charging stations in areas where it offers that service.
We would also be curious to see how much drivers in this programme earn. While they won’t have to deal with fuel costs, they would have to deal with increased electricity costs given that these vehicles would need to be charged overnight.
To that end TechCrunch’s report is incredibly vague and we’re hoping Bolt can provide clarity on all of the issues we’ve outlined above.
If you ask us though, this just sounds like a bad idea right now, especially as we type this knowing our electricity is going out in 10 minutes.
UPDATE 28/10/21
Following publication of this story we received the following response from Bolt when asked if it was indeed launching its green category in South Africa in the next few months.
“We are looking to roll out the green category in South Africa and other African markets in the coming months – however this will be reliant on government’s ability to address infrastructural elements such as power supply to instantaneously carry our plans out – so therefore it will be a phased approach over the next 6-12 months,” Bolt told Hypertext.
Given that government and Eskom can’t manage to keep the electricity grid stable ahead of local government elections then, we aren’t holding our breath for any sort of electric taxi offering from Bolt in the near future.
