ONE MOTO: A Sustainable Solution to Urban Last-Mile Delivery

In the last one year delivery riders have seen a doubling of demand across the UAE. While this is good news for delivery companies it has had an unexpected fall out on the safety and well-being of the delivery riders themselves.

Over the past 12 months there have been more fatalities and accidents reported by delivery executives in the UAE than previous years (12 riders died in April 2020).

Adam Ridgway, CEO of ONE MOTO, manufacturer of electric delivery vehicles, took to the streets himself on his company’s electric two-wheeler ‘byka’ to deliver packages for friends over a period of seven days to find out the ground realities of the last-mile delivery industry in the UAE and help the UAE government find a solution to increase driver safety without affecting delivery company bottom lines.

It was discovered that each month the average delivery motorcycle travels 3,000kms, requiring servicing of brakes, tyres, plugs, sprockets, oil, filters regularly, yet due to the intense working pressure, many do not service as it eats in to the rider’s working hours, affecting their earnings.

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Approximately 5 hours per month is spent in downtime of the delivery riders in the UAE — yet the working pressure remains.

All this greatly increases risks for delivery riders.

Fiscally, a fleet of 500 vehicles costs about AED 265,000 in fuel and AED 215,000 in servicing. In most cases, the riders pay for the fuel, the servicing is taken care of by the service agreements of fleet operators - one last-mile operator said “it was cheaper to acquire the workshop, than pay the maintenance costs each year” (on a fleet of 353 vehicles).

2020 was the ‘Year of Introduction’ of ONE MOTO. ONE MOTO is an electric last-mile delivery solution that successfully addresses all the three primary problems of Environment, Safety and Profitability.

Using the most accurate qualified data for the operators the research team at ONE MOTO demonstrated that by switching electric delivery motorcycles (Byka) the cost-savings are 73.8%. While cost savings for using electric delivery vans (Deliva) are 58.6%.

Thus, CapEx investment would breakeven in 5 to 6 months.

The ONE MOTO study pointed out that if the government wants to eliminate the fatal statistics, support the hyper-growth delivery sector and the welfare of those servicing the industry, a switch to EV really is the answer.

Adam Ridgway concludes: “I travelled a total of 1,001 kms which cost just AED 10! That should bolt the need to switch!”

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