Electric Scooter Maker Gogoro Is Sidestepping a Big Obstacle
Electric Scooter Maker Gogoro Is Sidestepping a Big Obstacle -- original article
by Alex Davies -- Wired
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Gogoro's new "Go Charger" is a bid to expand its charging networks and user base. GOGORO
THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE for any EV startup that wants to use public battery swapping is knowing how many batteries you’ll need to make the program work. Too few and people get ticked off when they can’t get one; too many and you’re wasting money. Gogoro, the electric scooter company with a wild idea for transforming urban mobility and energy storage, thinks it’s solved this problem:
It wants customers to share their batteries, and it’s willing to subsidize the cost of a charger if you’re willing to play along.
Gogoro, a long-hyped, well-funded startup, revealed the Smartscooter at CES last year . It’s a sleek, fully electric ride that costs about $4,000 and gets about 60 miles on a charge. It’s perfect for urban commuting. Gogoro’s cool trick, though, are the ATM-sized battery swap stations where people swap dead packs for fresh ones.
The company hopes to install stations in cities worldwide , and, along the way, promote the use of renewable energy. The big problem with solar panels and wind turbines is they produce energy sporadically, or at times when it isn’t needed. The nation’s electrical grid is designed to deliver energy, not store it , making it hard to align supply with demand. A network of Gogoro stations could ease that by drawing energy when it’s produced and storing it until it’s needed.
This gives us a way to scale and accelerate our deployments. JASON GORDON, GOGORO COMMUNICATIONS CHIEF.
Since launching in Taipei in July , Gogoro has installed 125 charging stations and sold 4,000 scooters, which it says have covered a total of 1.8 million miles. Next up is Europe, starting with Amsterdam early this year. The Smartscooter should be certified for use in the US in the second half of 2016. And the company’s here at CES to announce its plan for accelerating its rollout in new cities.
It starts with serving customers who’d rather charge their 20-pound batteries at home and skip the whole swapping thing. Gogoro is introducing “Go Charger,” an odd name for device you’ll keep in the house. The charger holds two batteries, plugs into a 110-volt outlet, and looks like a subwoofer laid on its side. It comes in two versions, one charges a battery in five hours, the other in 2.5 hours. This doesn’t mean just anyone, anywhere can buy a Smartscooter, though. At least for now, Gogoro is restricting sales of its scooters to cities where it has, or plans, established networks—largely because it’s hard to make necessary repairs when you don’t have anyone stationed nearby.
Here’s the cool part: If your Go Charger is publicly accessible—say you run a restaurant or cafe and install it near the door—you can register it with Gogoro and let anyone use it. Make it available for more than 12 hours a day, Gogoro will even pay for it. It’s called the OPEN Initiative—for Owner Proposed Energy Network.
However annoying the acronym, it helps avoid the big pitfall with battery swapping: Finding the right balance between the number of battery stations and riders, especially when the program is new to a city. In Taipei, installing 125 stations in public places wasn’t a problem, because Gogoro had a close relationship with the city government.
Gogoro CEO Horace Luke says lots of cities are eager to have the scooters, but still, installing swap stations on public property may be a tougher sell. By putting smaller chargers in private spaces, Gogoro can jumpstart its battery swapping network. “This gives us a way to scale and accelerate our deployments,” says Jason Gordon, Gogoro’s communications chief.
So if you’re hoping your hometown will welcome the battery swapping startup, your chances just got better.
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Sorry about the formatting. I think this is a cool idea that just might succeed in many urban settings, so I think it's a good seed.
On the other hand... I have a lot to do this morning, so I don't feel like spending a great deal of time on text formatting!
Very interesting concept. This could be a boom for the urban areas. The ''Go Charger'' and their view of how it could be used is really forward thinking. Hope to see this as a successful venture.
It sounds like a system that can "grow organically". It can pretty much finance itself as it grows. The finance side is often more important than the technical.