This ex-Tesla employee just launched a cheap electric motorcycle

Tesla sales continue to plunge. But a former Tesla employee’s startup now has a long waiting list for a very different type of product: an electric motorcycle aimed at customers in Africa and South Asia.

The startup, called Zeno, officially launched its first product today, a sport utility electric motorcycle called the Emara. Ranging from $1,000 to $1,500 depending on the market, it’s designed to be cheaper than gas alternatives—and do a better job of carrying heavy loads or multiple passengers on rough roads. The battery, which is sold separately, can either be charged or instantly switched out at swapping stations. After a soft launch with several dozen customers in small Kenyan cities several months ago, it already has loyal fans.

Zeno’s founder and CEO, Michael Spencer, had never been a car guy. Instead, he’d worked at Tesla because of its bigger vision for sustainable energy—how battery storage and solar power fit in with mobility, and what it would take to replace fossil fuels at a larger scale. But then he realized it would be possible to work faster outside of Tesla.

Spencer left Tesla in 2022, after four years of scaling up the Model 3 and Y, deploying Superchargers, and leading the company’s energy business. “I had a pretty deep understanding of what was and wasn’t working at Tesla,” he says. He also had worked in Africa in the past, and recognized that the fastest growth in greenhouse gas emissions was happening in emerging economies.

“I came to some conclusions that the original Tesla master plan was going to be, somewhat paradoxically, easier to execute on and accomplish and achieve in emerging markets,” Spencer says. “[These are] markets where there’s still a lot of greenfield development opportunity for energy infrastructure. A large portion of the population isn’t grid connected yet, but is being grid connected quickly. GDP growth is increasing, the middle class is growing, and energy consumption is increasing.”

One point of intervention: motorcycles. When someone living in a country like Kenya earns enough money to buy a vehicle, it’s typically a gas motorcycle. Spencer saw an opening for a better electric version. Chinese manufacturers make electric scooters, but they aren’t well suited to the common use in Africa: three or four passengers, with heavy loads, on rugged, bumpy roads. High-end electric motorcycle brands for other markets, like Damon, were unaffordable. Other companies hadn’t focused on redesigning the standard, mass-market 150cc motorcycle from the ground up.

“We started with a similar thesis as we did at Tesla, which is, whatever we make has to be as good or better than the options that [customers] have currently,” says Spencer. “It has to be a more delightful vehicle to operate. We set out to create a better vehicle than the most popular 150cc motorbikes: carry more load, go faster, handle rougher terrain, go up steeper hills. Better across all of those, but then still affordable and accessible.”

Adding performance and range to the vehicle added cost. So to make it affordable, the startup had to rethink the business model. Customers have the option to buy the bike without a battery—the most expensive part—and then rent batteries at swapping stations.

“It allows you to treat the vehicle and the battery separately, as two different commercial assets, and allows you to sell the vehicle up front more affordably and spread the cost of the battery out over time,” Spencer says. “And it solves for range. You can swap a battery at a Coca-Cola-sized vending machine. In about half the time it takes to fuel a motorbike, you can get another charged battery and sufficient range.”

The biggest draw for customers is cost: Gas motorcycle drivers in Africa routinely spend more on fuel, in absolute terms, than commuters in California. In relative terms, it’s much more: a $3,000 annual fuel bill can be 30% to 50% of their income.

When the company soft-launched the product in small towns in East Africa several months ago, with a small network of charging stations, the first customers immediately saw a financial benefit. “From the day after they’ve purchased it, they’re seeing their take-home income going up 25%, or in some cases 35% or 40%. It’s like going to somebody who commutes from Oakland to Palo Alto who drives a Toyota Corolla and makes $100,000 a year and saying, ‘Look, switch to a Model 3, and you’re going to now see your take-home income go to $125,000 a year,’” Spencer says.

The cost was critical for investors. “One piece of the puzzle for us is, do the economics work, or are you asking somebody to pay a green premium?” says Mike Winterfield, founder and managing partner at Active Impact Investments, which invested in a seed round in 2023 and another follow-on round in 2024 along with Lowercarbon Capital, Toyota Ventures, and others. (Zeno has raised $17.92 million to date.) “Like, oh, I want a motorbike that’s better for the environment, so I’ll pay a little bit more—we don’t like that. We like stuff that’s cheaper, better, faster already for the consumer, and the environment is a drag-along benefit, so there isn’t sales friction.”

The design was another selling point. Some competitors were also working on electric motorcycles for the African market, but they “sort of like slapped together components from other bike manufacturers and ended up with something that was subpar, and getting quite poor reviews from their early customers,” Winterfield says. Zeno, he says, “built something that customers adored” from the beginning.

The batteries can play another role: When they’re plugged in to charge, they can support the grid by charging when demand is low. Customers can also take the batteries home. If they have access to electricity at home, they can charge the batteries there. But if they don’t, the batteries can charge other devices when they’re not in the bikes. “We’ve got customers today who are driving all day on their motorbikes, swapping at swap stations, and then cooking on their batteries with energy-efficient induction cookstoves,” Spencer says. “And then repeating the cycle the next day.”

Through word of mouth, the company has already built up a waitlist of thousands of people, ranging from families who want to use the motorcycles to take children to school and run errands to ride-hailing drivers who use motorcycles on Uber-like platforms. Today’s official launch opens up the first product to preorders in Kenya and India. The company is designed to scale rapidly, from building the product to charging infrastructure, and it plans to expand to other parts of Africa and Asia, Spencer says. While a small number of the motorcycles are already on roads, the company plans to deliver the next set of vehicles in 2026.

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