In a move towards sustainable transportation, eFTD Africa, an eco-friendly last-mile delivery company, has announced plans to revolutionise the logistics industry with the deployment of over 18,000 electric motorcycles.
Mr Oluseyi Osinaike, the Chief of Staff and Product Manager at eFTD Africa, made the announcement in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Monday in Lagos.
He said the massive rollout was aimed at empowering logistics companies to make the switch from polluting internal combustion engine vehicles, marking a significant stride towards a greener future for last-mile delivery.
According to Osinaike, the electric motorcycles which are assembled in Lagos, will be deployed over the next five years.
“Beyond the 18,000 electric motorcycles, we also plan to deploy 500 battery swap stations across Lagos and Abuja,” he said.
The eFTD manager said that the battery swap stations would be done through its infrastructure company called Zoome.
“Zoome, which was set up last year, will handle distribution of batteries which is the technical support for the electric motorcycles.
“This will enable riders to easily go into swap stations to change their batteries once it is low,” Osinaike added.
Speaking on how the innovation started, he said that in 2015, FTD Logistics, a company created purely for last-mile delivery utilising internal combustion engine vehicles to carry out services, was founded.
Osinaike said that, however, in 2022, the company began to look for ways to make the business more sustainable, noting that one of the key things that came up was the electric motorcycles.
“So we did a lot of research, we went to East Africa, India, so many parts of the world to try and figure out where to source some of these products and bring them in.
“As of August 2022, we deployed our first set of electric motorcycles and rebranded FTD Logistics into eFTD, and that’s what we have here.
“eFTD now became the company that was not just carrying out last-minute deliveries, but also trying to prove the commercial viability of the electric motorcycles in Lagos, Nigeria.
“Also, we saw the need for other logistics companies to benefit from using electric motorcycles, due to the subsidy removal which has made fuel more expensive and unsustainable.
“We also realised that asides the high cost of fuel, this electric motorcycles have less moving parts, hence it’s easy to maintain,” Osinaike said.
He said the first batch of electric motorcycles were sold to logistics companies such as Fez among others .
Also speaking, Mr Adedayo Odunlami, Chief Executive Officer of eFTD and Zoome, said its aim was to transform last-mile transportation in Africa with commercially viable electric motorcycles and a rapidly expanding network of battery swap stations.
He said the zero-emission motorcycles tackled the critical challenges faced by logistics companies using traditional petrol-powered motorcycles in the area of high fuel costs.
Odunlami added that it also resolved reliability issues and significant environmental harm.
According to him, these factors drive up operational expenses, slashing business margins by up to 50 per cent and contribute heavily to urban carbon emissions.
He added that the company’s vision was also to build Africa’s largest sustainable e-mobility ecosystem, enhancing fleet utility, reducing costs and improving service reliability. (NAN)
