Kenyans on Twitter, the car twitter section has analysed one of the most hyped ride hailing app, Nopea.
Nopea Ride, which is part of the EkoRent Africa Limited company has been struggling in a country where mechanics are shady, electricity blackout is rampant and management are looters.
A tweet shared by one, Kalamzinga, showed a couple of Nopea Ride gathering dust in a parking lot.
‘Hmm. What’s the story? Batteries dying? Auctioneers?’, he posed on Twitter.
Graphic Design for 2k, (@Kaizer_Konyagi), replied, ‘drivers pay ksh 1100 per day for the lease. They still need to forfeit 11 bob/km to nopea ride. Uber/bolt need their cut, you need airtime, the cost of nopea ride just doesn’t make sense to drivers… “
He then added about another electric franchise in Kenya,”… and BasiGo will suffer the same fateanyway mimi ni ‘hater'”.
Nopea Ride boast full electric vehicles, running on the Nissan Leaf models.
Nopea launched in Kenya in 2018, and was planning to have over 1500 Electric Vehicles by the end of 2021. It is not clear if this has been achieved.
What is clear is that with high competition from gasoline cars, poor and rabid management and perennial loos of electricity has made the model of ride hailing app expensive to run.
By the time of going to press, the Finnish electric cab firm had not responded to the SpaceYaMagari gang question.
Other analysis by the #SpaceYaMagari gang.
“Lack of good feasibility study. The price per day, short range of batteries & lack of actual fast chargers. It’s based off an economic concept called Big Market Delusion, where everyone assumes emerging tech will always make you fast money” – @Chap_Dee
“Sh1100 per day I a big ask” – @Onyango_Kodero
“Challenges we face those of us in electric mobility… batteries failing and maybe fried controllers…”, – @LeeRussian
“First Gen batteries on the leaf were/are horrible. Not recommended getting a 2nd hand vehicle”, @akams_
“Lack of business maybe? Their ultimatums could be turning drivers away”, – @Kevlan_
