Bennett  Oghifo

As more and more Nigerians begin to embrace the use of cleaner energy in fueling mobility across the country, one company has in the last one year and a few months, been steadily increasing the efforts in this regard to make mobility as affordable as possible.

This efforts, the company has been making is in the area of locally manufacturing electric bikes for businesses and for personal mobility across different parts of the country.

Introduced in Nigeria sometime in 2024, Spiro, with a manufacturing base in Ogun state, Spiro is gradually becoming a household name, as its bikes are making headlines in different parts of Nigeria.

Rahul Gaur, Director of Spiro West Africa, affirms that the introduction of Spiro bikes in the country has significantly cut the running cost of bikes and reduced the down time for riders.

He said, “What we could observe was the fact that the riders were not saving so much. And hence, electric mobility, I’ll say affordable electric mobility, will help them save more when it comes to electric mobility, at least from Spiro’s stable today”.

Explaining that aside cost cutting, Spiro bikes also help in keeping a cleaner environment, the Director said “as an organization, what we are doing is we are giving a product which is adding to the cleaner environment for the country, which is very, very needed today. 

“We are also creating jobs, not only from the manufacturing plant, not only from the swap stations, rather a lot of tech software engineers have been hired by Spiro. And hence it’s a full-fledged, ecosystem that we have built in, which is creating more and more jobs, from swap station agents to technicians to engineers to our plant operators. And lastly, we are making the riders save more money, which eventually will help the economic growth of the country better in the coming times”.

Confirming that the riders of Spiro bikes are happy, he said “I think the best part for the riders is that they do not have to wait for the repair of bikes for longer hours, plus the maintenance cost is less. And finally, on the daily cost of running, which is your swap price or your fuel savings, they are very happy on the extra money that this bike is making them save today.

The Director added that though sourcing energy was a challenge at the initial stage of its operations, it current depends on the national grid, maintain storage network as well as generates solar energy in some cases to power its swapping station.

According to him, “the primary source of energy is obviously the grid. The second medium we are choosing is the energy storage solution, this solution, powers the swap station, battery swap station, when there is no electricity. And thirdly, we are now moving towards adding solar to the whole power generation on all our swap stations.

“So we have a full-fledged team which works upon the hunting, scouting for locations where we would need the battery swap stations. The whole design of a network is done by our maps team which works very, very closely with the ground teams to ensure that we have swap station at a very near places where the riders can go and swap easily”.

On the market competition, Mr. Rahul Gaur, added that “it’s not about competition. It is all about giving access to convenient and affordable mobility. Whosoever can provide that will obviously be preferred. But we are making sure as we are pricing our bikes as close as the petrol bikes, so it is a very healthy competition, which will bring out the best for the consumer”.

Spiro which is the largest electric mobility company in Africa, operates the largest battery swapping infrastructure in 8 countries on the continent. Spiro intends to transform the African economies through substitution of expensive imported fossil fuel-based transportation into affordable, and accessible electric mobility solutions locally made in Africa, by Africans, for Africa and the world. 

This far, Spiro has achieved over half a billion kilometres of CO2 free travel, crossed 23 million battery swaps and operated over 1295 battery swapping stations with more than 45,000 motor bikes in circulation. Through its expanding regional production network and upcoming facilities in different African countries, Spiro is committed to deliver affordable, locally manufactured electric mobility solutions at scale across Africa.