By Michael Wanyama | Team leader
We are just getting started on a conversion pilot project for a 14-seater 1998 Toyota Hiace; the most common form of 4-wheeled public transportation in Uganda.
Our overall goal for the project is to build a useful EV daily driver, with ~150km range and performance comparable to the original ICE engine, and to learn a whole lot along the way. These taxi vans are the worst maintained posing safety and high emission risks that worsen public health as well and slowing Africa's climateAction efforts.
After a successful conversion, we intend on carrying out more conversions at reasonable fees to help sustain some of our other projects on clean, safe and sustainable mobility without having to solely depend on grants and donations. Planning and design options are already on the table, we are currently working out partnership deals with some of our locally renowned company like Musa Body Machinery so we can locally replicate some of the EV conversion components to cut costs on subsequent conversions.
Our team members working on this project have a decent background in electronics, mechanics and fabrication but relatively limited experience in software, and motor control design, so will be leaning on some helpful friends for some advice and assistance there.
This project hasn't received any funding yet but we are hoping to get started very soon with help of friends and connections while we explore other funding opportunities.
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