After raising $45 million in February, GoCab, the mobility fintech that operates Yango’s largest fleet in Côte d’Ivoire, has handed over 100 fully electric cars to driver-partners in Abidjan.
The deployment is the first half of a 200-vehicle programme and gives the company one of Africa’s largest operational fleets of electric ride-hailing cars. It also makes Côte d’Ivoire the current front-runner in a race that has, until now, mostly played out on two and three wheels.
“For a professional driver, fuel is not a minor expense. It is one of the highest daily costs of doing business,” Moulaye Tabouré, the country manager and managing director of GoCab Côte d’Ivoire, said in a statement. “Reducing that cost by 60% to 80% can fundamentally transform a driver’s economics.”
The vehicles will operate mainly on GOYA, Yango’s premium ride-hailing service in the country.
Fuel is one of the highest daily costs of the job for drivers working through Yango’s platform. GoCab is layering that saving onto its drive-to-own structure, under which drivers make regular payments from their ride-hailing income over three years, after which the vehicle transfers to them. This is a model similar to the one that drove Moove, a Nigerian mobility fintech, to a $2 billion valuation.
