Here’s How Taiwan’s Gogoro Leads With Innovation In Electric Two-wheeler Industry

Based in Taipei (Taiwan), Gogoro is a two-wheeled electric vehicle and battery swapping infrastructure manufacturer. It offers a range of smart electric two-wheelers that feature cloud connectivity and an electric powertrain – gathering, analysing, and sharing riding data through a mobile application on the rider’s smartphone. Summing it up, Gogoro is an innovation leader in vehicle design and electric propulsion, smart battery design, battery swapping, and cloud services that utilize artificial intelligence to manage battery availability and safety.

Gogoro’s Battery Swapping Ecosystem

About 95 per cent of all-electric two wheels scooters in Taiwan use Gogoro battery swapping. In December 2021, 28 per cent of two-wheelers sales in Taipei derived their power from Gogoro battery swapping. Thus, with its swappable battery system, the company has cornered the Taiwanese market in electric mopeds.

With the aid of its innovative ecosystem, the Company has so far accumulated over $1 billion in revenue, and 450,000+ battery swap subscribers. With over 10,000 battery-swapping GoStations, at over 2,200 convenient locations, Gogoro Network is hosting 330,000 daily battery swaps. The firm has achieved more than 250 million total battery swaps to date.

The Gogoro Network is at the centre of Gogoro’s innovation. It enables all of its products and businesses including the Gogoro Smartscooter and ‘Powered By Gogoro Network’ vehicles to utilize it for refuelling through battery swapping. The Gogoro Network is also the underlying platform for GoShare, Gogoro’s end-to-end mobility sharing platform and solution for smart cities.

Solid-state Lithium Ceramic Battery

Recently, Gogoro achieved another technological feat towards sustainable mobility solutions, unveiling world’s first solid-state lithium ceramic battery prototype for two-wheel EVs battery swapping. The technology is developed together with ProLogium Technology, a global leader in solid-state battery technology.

The new solid-state lithium ceramic batteries prototype integrates with Gogoro’s existing vehicles and battery swapping network. It is the next generation of batteries, which is expected to replace the traditional lithium-ion batteries and become the mainstream power source for electric vehicles and consumer electronics.

Solid-state batteries provide higher energy density and deliver a greater range for electric vehicles. They’re called “solid-state” because the liquid electrolyte is replaced with a solid-state material. Moreover, they are much safer as solid electrolytes would be far less flammable than liquid materials, and thus far less sensitive to heat, too. This could allow for a greater current draw as well as faster charging, as the battery won’t need a narrow temperature range for safety reasons. Gogoro estimates that its solid-state batteries will increase the capacity of current lithium batteries by 140% or greater, from 1.7 kWh to 2.5 kWh.

The Success Story

Gogoro has become a major name in the two-wheeler electric vehicle world. While a lot of factors amalgamate for such successes, the foremost is the government’s support. Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs picked the company over other electric scooter brands to work together on setting up battery swap stations in Taiwan.

The strong network dots the map such that its battery swap sites are present at intervals of 500 meters in urban Taiwan, usually in obvious roadside locations. In other parts of the island, they are present at every two to five kilometres distance. The central government also paid half the cost of building the swap stations and offered publicly accessible land for the setup.

Earlier, Gogoro’s batteries powered its own brand of electric scooters, swapping available at local swap stations. The firm has since partnered with 10 different vehicle makers, allowing companies like Yamaha to leapfrog their electric-scooter development process by relying on Gogoro’s battery tech.

The black and green batteries are now powering 47 unique models of vehicles. The batteries have even found use in stationary infrastructures, such as smart parking meters.

After conquering the domestic market of Taiwan, the company treads on to rest of the world. Unfolding a massive international expansion strategy, Gojoro targeted the three largest two-wheeled vehicle markets in the world – India, China, and South-East Asia.

The firm entered the Indian market with a partnership with Hero Motocorp. Gogoro also announced a partnership with Yadea and DCJ to enter China. Partnering with Gojek, Gogoro added Indonesia to the list as well.

Last but not least, Gogoro makes its mobility products look cool and comfortable to ride, busting stereotypes of what an electric scooter must be like.

Investors

Founded in 2011 by entrepreneurs Horace Luke and Matt Taylor, Gogoro secured $50 million in seed funding in the year of inception. Three years later, in 2014, Gogoro raised $100 million in its Series B funding from several investors. By November 2015, the company had established a considerable presence that helped it to raise another $30 million round of investment from the likes of Panasonic and Taiwan’s National Development Fund.

The firm announced its Series C round of investment in the second half of 2017, to the tune of $300 million from Singapore’s Temasek, Generation Investment Management, co-founded by Al Gore, Japan’s Sumitomo Corporation, and French utility Engie.

An analyst firm, Frost & Sullivan, in 2020, awarded Gogoro with the ‘2020 Global Company of the Year Award for the Swappable Battery Electric Scooter Market’.

The Taiwanese enterprise then went public in 2022 as it merged with Poema Global. Poema Global is a Nasdaq-listed special-purpose acquisition company.

In April 2021, Gogoro technology entered India as the firm announced a strategic partnership with a leading two-wheeler manufacturer, Hero MotoCorp rolling out its Gogoro Network battery swapping in the country.