After thirteen years, local automaker Mobius Motors has announced that it is going into liquidation. This follows a culmination of struggles that have ranged from debts, tax battles and low funding.

“At a meeting of shareholders that was held on August 5, 2024, it was resolved to place the company under liquidation as per section 393 (1) (b) of the Insolvency Act and to appoint KVSK Sastry as the liquidator to wind up the company, said Mobius Motors chief executive officer Nicolas Guibert in a notice.

Following this notice, the range of problems that Mobius has been facing have emerged. In one media report, the commercial director at Mobius Michael de Souza said that funding from investors had completely dried up, meaning now new units could be developed for the market.

“Our shareholders have not provided us with any new capital. We have been seeking new investors but have not been successful. It’s a sad day,” he said. This lack of funding piled on the monster of debts that the company was facing.

Apparently, as of the year 2020, Mobius Motors had more debt than assets to cover debts. It had already accumulated a debt of Sh6. 49.2 million and had shareholders’ deficit of Sh. 389.1 million.

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Before this, Mobius Motors had engaged in a tax battle with the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) in which it had warned that the tax demands from the KRA would lead to its collapse.

In 2018, the KRA had slapped Mobius with a tax demand of Sh. 85.74 million. This demand was claimed to have been based on assessments for the period between January 2014 and December 2016 in relation to capital received from the parent company.

Mobius contested this demand and tabled an appeal at the Tax Appeals Tribunal. The company demonstrated its financial vulnerability by submitting its accounts to show that payment of the amount that KRA was demanding for would lead to a collapse of the business. Despite this, the company lost the appeal.

Mobius Motors states that it was founded in 2011 by Joel Jackson to build a vehicle in Africa, for Africa. “The first-generation Mobius II was launched in Kenya in 2015. Mobius continues to provide end-to-end customer support and has applied early product feedback into the development of the next-generation Mobius II, launching in 2019,” the automaker states.