Chinese automaker Dongfeng Motor has set in motion plans to produce its first electric vehicles in Kenya.
The carmaker whose headquarter is in Wuhan, Hubei province, has been dealing with ICE light commercial trucks and pick-ups at its Nairobi space, but now joins the ev race that’s putting Kenya at the top of the climatech map.
Dongfeng will produce the vehicles in collaboration with Mombasa based car assembler Associated Vehicle Assemblers Ltd (AVA) and the Kenyan electric vehicle technology company ePureMotion.
AVA was established in 1975 in Miritini at the tourist city of Mombasa and currently assembles 67 different models of ICE cars from 21 OEMs in 9 countries. These include FUSO, Mahindra, Toyota, Scania, Proton among others.
In an interview with Mobility Rising in July, 2025, AVA Managing Director Matt Lloyd shared that the company’s dedicated EV assembly line can produce up to 10,000 electric vehicles per year.
He also revealed that AVA already had over 13 EV clients already engaged and projects ranging from e-mobility startups to public transport electrification.
Steering AVA to help position Kenya as a regional hub for sustainable transport, Lloyd said that plans are in the pipeline for off-grid solar charging stations, addressing the infrastructure gap.
Before electric bus trailblazers BasiGo moved base to Kenya Vehicle Assemblers (KVM) in Thika, it worked with AVA to rollout its initial buses.
ePureMotion is better known for providing taxi operators with evs on lease basis, reducing the cost required to do business using battery electric vehicles (BEVs), as well as selling evs to the general public. It also develops and distributes charging stations for its users.
ePure delivered the first EV kits for assembly to AVA in September.
AVA is already assembling electric golf carts and three-wheelers and is in talks with other companies for both city buses and electric matatus.
The collaboration to build the vehicles within the country is a different approach from that used by Finnish company EkoRent Oy (est 2014), which launched Kenya’s first ev taxis NopeaRide just before the pandemic. The company relied on imports, and started experiencing problems during the pandemic…before finally filing for insolvency after failing to secure funding.
With vehicle assembly companies like AVA and electric vehicle technology firms like ePure are saving global EV manufacturers like Dongfeng the costly price of setting up their own plants. Dongfeng has been in operation since 1969.
