Live Pilot · Addis Ababa

Ten BYDs. Ninety days. One standard.

In late October 2026, RISIQ puts ten BYD electric vehicles through a full battery-certification cycle in Addis Ababa — and hands the results to the banks, micro-finance institutions and insurers who agree to read them with us.

10 BYD vehicles 90-day cycle Addis Ababa Founding places open

For institutions carrying EV risk in Ethiopia — no cost to participate in the founding cohort.

Founding cohort 9places, Addis Ababa
Commercial banks3 open
Micro-finance institutions3 open
Insurers3 open
Pilot begins Late Oct 2026
Vehicles under test 10 BYD
Cost to join None
BYD Atto 33 vehicles · 420 km rated
BYD Dolphin2 vehicles · 405 km rated
BYD Song Plus2 vehicles · 505 km rated
BYD Yuan Plus2 vehicles · 430 km rated
BYD e21 vehicle · 405 km rated
Why These Ten

The cars your customers are already financing.

BYD is the marque that arrived with Ethiopia's import ban — and it is the marque sitting in your loan books right now. The pilot fleet spans five models and a 12,600–88,300 km mileage range, deliberately chosen to look like a real portfolio rather than a showroom.

Locked

Every one is an import

No OEM service channel, no unlockable diagnostics, no warranty you can call on. Exactly the cars nobody can currently value — which is why they are the only honest test.

Mixed

Five models, real mileage

Atto 3, Dolphin, Song Plus, Yuan Plus and e2, from nearly new to heavily used, so per-model degradation behaviour starts building from day one.

Repeated

Measured more than once

Each vehicle takes a full reference test and repeat Rapid Checks across the 90 days — which is how the fast test earns its accuracy band rather than claiming one.

What You Receive

A portfolio view, not a pile of PDFs.

Every certificate lands in a partner dashboard built for the question a credit committee actually asks: which of these assets is worth what, and which one is about to surprise us.

Illustrative fleet. The figures below show the shape and format of the report a pilot partner receives — modelled on a representative ten-vehicle portfolio. They are not measurements. Real readings begin when the pilot runs in late October 2026.
Vehicles certified 0 Five BYD models, all locked imports
Mean state of health 0% Across the whole ten-vehicle portfolio
Spread, best to worst 0pp 97.1% down to 74.8% — same fleet, same price bracket
Odometer's predictive power r = −0.04 Mileage explains almost none of the variance in battery health

Mileage does not predict battery health

Each dot is one vehicle. If the odometer told you what a battery was worth, these dots would form a line. They do not — which is precisely the gap a certificate closes.

Read this: P04 has covered 71,500 km and grades A at 93.8%. P10 has covered 29,700 km — under half the distance — and grades D at 74.8%. On paper P10 is the better buy. In collateral terms it is the worse one.

The portfolio, ranked

The same ten vehicles sorted by measured state of health, against the grade thresholds the certificate uses.

Read this: four vehicles grade A, three B, two C and one D. A lender treating this fleet as one risk class is over-lending on three of them.

Rated range versus measured range

What the brochure promises, next to what the battery actually delivers today.

Read this: the shortfall runs from 12 km on the healthiest car to 108 km on the weakest. That gap is the part of the asset a valuation currently misses.

View the underlying data
Illustrative pilot fleet: ten BYD vehicles with odometer, state of health, grade and range figures.
VehicleModelOdometerState of healthGradeRated rangeMeasured rangeShortfall
P01Atto 318,400 km97.1%A420 km408 km12 km
P02Dolphin62,800 km95.4%A405 km386 km19 km
P03Song Plus24,100 km88.2%B505 km445 km60 km
P04Atto 371,500 km93.8%A420 km394 km26 km
P05Yuan Plus33,900 km84.6%C430 km364 km66 km
P06Dolphin47,200 km91.7%B405 km371 km34 km
P07Song Plus12,600 km90.3%B505 km456 km49 km
P08Atto 355,400 km96.2%A420 km404 km16 km
P09e288,300 km79.4%C405 km322 km83 km
P10Yuan Plus29,700 km74.8%D430 km322 km108 km
The Invitation

Three kinds of institution. Three founding places each.

The founding cohort is deliberately small, because each partner gets direct engineering time rather than a mailing list. Participation costs nothing — what we ask for is access and honest feedback on the certificate.

3 places · Banks

Commercial banks

You are writing five-year vehicle loans against an asset that can lose half its value in two, with no way to price the part that degrades.

  • Certificates on ten vehicles from your own or a partner importer's stock.
  • A residual-value model your credit team can actually interrogate.
  • First refusal on a certificate-backed EV loan product after the pilot.
Claim a bank place
3 places · MFIs

Micro-finance institutions

You lend to the drivers and small fleets who feel a degraded battery first — and who have the least room to absorb it when a car stops earning.

  • Battery-health screening on vehicles already in your portfolio.
  • A per-borrower affordability picture that accounts for real range, not rated range.
  • Pricing designed for MFI ticket sizes, billed locally in birr.
Claim an MFI place
3 places · Insurers

Insurers

You are underwriting cars whose most expensive component is invisible to you at policy issue and disputed at claim.

  • An independently measured SoH figure at underwriting and at claim.
  • Baseline degradation data to price a battery-warranty product against.
  • A tamper-evident record that settles battery-related claims disputes.
Claim an insurer place
What We Ask In Return

Access, attention, and an honest answer.

Founding partners pay nothing during the pilot. What makes the cohort valuable is that the people in it actually engage.

  • Access to vehicles you finance, insure or hold — or an introduction to an importer who will provide them.
  • One hour a month with someone who makes credit or underwriting decisions, not a delegate.
  • A candid verdict on whether the certificate would change what you actually do.
  • Permission to name you as a founding partner once the pilot closes — withdrawable at any point.

The 90 days, in order

Now → Oct 2026

Cohort forms

Founding places are confirmed and vehicles are nominated. Rig assembly and calibration complete.

Late Oct 2026

Pilot goes live

First reference tests on the ten BYDs. Certificates issue from the first passing run.

Nov → Dec 2026

Repeat measurement

Rapid Checks against reference baselines; the fast test's accuracy band gets validated per model.

Jan 2027

Findings, then terms

Full dataset and portfolio report to every founding partner, and commercial terms for those who want to continue.

Founding Cohort

Nine places. Late October. Addis Ababa.

Tell us which vehicles you carry risk on, and we will tell you within a week whether the pilot can cover them.