Taiwan-based electric scooter (e-scooter) startup Gogoro made great advances in 2018, and its successes have spurred other domestic vehicle manufacturers to earnestly compete in the e-scooter market.
This year, Gogoro’s industry partners will be launching their own e-scooters that are compatible with Gogoro’s battery-swapping infrastructure. The arrival of these new vehicle models that are from different brands but all featuring the same core technologies is expected to generate lots of excitement in the e-scooter market. To show how far Gogoro has evolved, the following is a summary of the 10 remarkable milestones reached by the startup during 2018.
Gogoro raised its annual e-scooter sales by 109% to surpass 120,000 vehicles in cumulative total
Impressive sales figure shows that e-scooter is the future
Within a short period of just three years, Gogoro has successfully entered the mainstream segment of Taiwan’s scooter market (i.e. 125cc models). The company’s e-scooter sales at the end of December 2018 came to 123,431 vehicles, indicating that the brand and its products have carved out a presence in the everyday life of commuters in Taiwan. The market entry of Gogoro has also brought about significant changes within Taiwan’s scooter industry. Traditional and well-established vehicle manufacturers have in turn announced that they will be competing in the e-scooter category with new offerings. All these demonstrate that battery electric vehicles represent an inevitable future trend.
Gogoro is the sales leader in Taiwan with an annual growth rate of 109%
The annual vehicle sales in the global scooter market fell by around 15% in 2018. However, Gogoro grew against the headwinds and more than doubled its total sales for the same year by devising a strategy for market demassification. Its annual vehicle sales increased from a total of approximately 30,000 vehicles in 2017 to more than 70,000 vehicles in 2018, showing a growth rate of 109%. Furthermore, the company’s monthly market share in Taiwan exceeded 13% in November 2018.
Gogoro has over 1,000 battery-swapping stations in Taiwan and plans to develop scooter-sharing services in Europe and Japan
With the deployment of GoStations in the eastern part of the island, Taiwan is now totally under the Gogoro Energy Network
Gogoro’s expansion into eastern Taiwan has been long anticipated. Since August 2018, the company has set up retail stores, service centers, and battery-swapping stations (also known as GoStations) in Yilan County and along the east coast of the island. Gogoro intends to deepen its relations with the local consumers so that they will become Smartscooter owners and part of the public that supports Taiwan’s transition to renewable energies.
With access to more than 1,000 GoStations across Taiwan, Smartscooter riders will be able to take round-trips of the island by the end of this first quarter
Last August, Gogoro announced a massive effort to extend the coverage of its battery-swapping infrastructure in Taiwan. The company has set out to build two battery-swapping kiosks every day with the goal of having 1,000 of them across the island at the end of 2018 and in operation before the end of this first quarter. Once this phase of infrastructure expansion is finished, Smartscooter users living in Taiwan’s six principal cities will be able to find a battery-swapping kiosk within a five-minute riding distance. To complete this ambitious task, Gogoro has enlisted local partners that have service points around the island. They include convenience chains (e.g. 7-Eleven and Hi-Life), supermarket chains and big-box stores (e.g. PX Mart, RT-Mart, and A.mart), and the government-run petroleum enterprise CPC.
Gogoro introduces the world’s first battery-swapping plus charging solution to better meet the needs of e-scooter users
Apart from building GoStations, Gogoro has also developed GoCharger Mobile, a charging adapter that can be plugged right into the battery system of its scooters. By making both battery swapping and residential charging available to users of its vehicles, Gogoro has contributed greatly to the acceleration and widening of e-scooter adoption. The launch of GoCharger Mobile also makes the entire charging infrastructure – the Gogoro Energy Network – the most inclusive system for powering e-scooters.
Sharing of Smartscooters coming to Spain and Japan as Gogoro extends this service to four overseas markets
Gogoro has established scooter-sharing businesses in Berlin and Paris. Following the successes in the German and French markets, Gogoro is now replicating this business model in Spain and Japan. With major foreign partners COUP (the subsidiary of Bosch) and Sumitomo, Gogoro is rolling out its scooter-sharing service in Madrid and Japan’s Ishigaki Island. The number of Gogoro Smartscooters that are being employed by scooter-sharing businesses in overseas markets now totals over 4,000 vehicles. They are instrumental worldwide in efforts to relieve traffic congestion in cities and to promote the use of renewable energies.
More scooter makers and logistics companies are partnering up with Gogoro
Yamaha, Aeon, and PGO are now part of the Gogoro Energy Network
As of now, the total number of battery swaps made on the entire Gogoro Energy Network has reached 25 million. The reliability of this system has earned the trust of industry partners, which include Yamaha, Aeon, and PGO. These major vehicle brands have made the Gogoro Energy Network their core technology platform for their new e-scooters that are slated for release in 2019. As the three manufacturers separately develop their e-scooters, they will also continue to incorporate the electronic control system, the smart battery, and the battery-swapping mechanism first created by Gogoro.
DHL becomes Gogoro’s first B2B partner as e-scooters enter commercial vehicle fleets
Gogoro 2 Utility, the startup’s first e-scooter model for commercial applications, was launched in August last year. Around the same time, international logistics enterprise DHL also announced that its operation center in Taiwan will establish a “green logistics fleet” that will be connected to the Gogoro Energy Network. This move is expected to usher in a new era for low-carbon logistics solutions. In addition to having DHL sign up as its first B2B partner, Gogoro will also bid in the latest tender issued by Chunghwa Post. As a natural proponent for the phase-out of traditional fuel vehicles, the startup has set up a special project to create utility scooters that meet the requirements of the local mail delivery system.
Gogoro has achieved many records and is one of the hottest brands from Taiwan
Taiwan’s Smartscooter riders set a new Guinness record for the largest parade of e-scooters
The loyal and enthusiastic users of Gogoro Smartscooters in Taiwan held on a “flash parade” through the Taipei Bridge on 7 October 2018. This event, which witnessed thousands of Smartscooters quietly sliding down the off-ramp of the bridge, was recognized by the Guinness World Records as the biggest motorcade of e-scooters ever.
Gogoro took second place in the 2018 Good Design Award, achieving the best result by a Taiwan-based brand
Gogoro Smartscooter was one of the top six contenders that stood out among the nearly 5,000 innovative products that competed for Japan’s Good Design Award for 2018. It ultimately earned second-place recognition, and Gogoro became the first brand from Taiwan that has entered the finalists’ round.
(This article is an English translation of news content provided by EnergyTrend’s media partner TechNews. Photos and images courtesy of Gogoro Inc.)
