Since around 18 million people in Taiwan use scooters and the country is keen on maintaining a clean environment, ‘GoGoro' SmartScooter—a company that produces scooters—perceives the Taiwanese market as a lucrative option for their new line of scooters. GoGoro' are smart scooters that work with two batteries. The company is Taiwan-based and founded by former staff at HTC. The scooter will be on sale in Taiwan this summer, and contains around 30 sensors to monitor gravity, shock and ambient light. The sensors can also be connected to a mobile application. The scooter is considered to be revolutionary in the world of scooters, not only because it does not use gas which is expensive, but also because it takes riders only 6 seconds to swap batteries at ‘Gogoro' stations. The scooter can travel 100 km on a single charge. After that, the rider would need to go to the nearest station and change batteries. Despite the motor having the exact displacement of a traditional 125 cc engine, the batteries are designed in partnership with Panasonic. It therefore has the same Panasonic Lithium Ion 18650 battery as the Tesla S. The two batteries that are located underneath the seat can easily be swapped. A retail store was opened in early January this year in Taipei to educate customers about the new smart scooter. Although the price of the smart scooter, as well as the cost of batteries is still not known, around 80 Gogoro stations will be available around Taipei and New Taipei when the scooters will go on sale. Stores and parking spaces will also be available for customers. The size of the scooter is similar to the size of a 50cc Honda scooter. Many Taiwanese are waiting for the scooter to experience it.
