Mobility startup Gogoro has been making waves in Taiwan for a few years now with its smart electric scooters, and has even built on its success there with expansions into Europe. It is now returning to its roots with a new scooter-sharing system for the city of Taoyuan, which will allow residents to hop aboard for a ride with the click of a button.
Gogoro's scooters are connected electric vehicles powered by swappable battery packs that can be replaced at kiosks stationed around the city so users can stay on the move. After initially just being available to purchase by folks after a cleaner way to get around town, Gogoro scooters have since rolled into Paris and Berlin as part of rental services for subscribers.
These programs were operated by another company called Coup that simply used fleets of Gogoro's scooters, but this time around Gogoro will be running the entire operation itself. The service is called GoShare and consists of Gogoro scooters, a companion app and the company's network of charging kiosks throughout the city of Taoyuan.
Whether they want to use a Gogoro scooter to zip across town on a one-off trip or use the vehicles as part of their daily routine, customers will be able to gain access to the service through the app. They can then see which scooters are nearby, along with their battery levels, and reserve one with a touch of a single button.
"GoShare is the first end-to-end mobility sharing platform, and tightly integrates the Gogoro Network, Gogoro Smartscooter, and GoShare App into a powerful solution that eliminates many of the operational challenges to deliver an optimized platform that is easy for riders to use, more sustainable to operate and more viable for cities to meet their aggressive smart city goals and initiatives," says Horace Luke, founder, and CEO of Gogoro.
The service will operate in a similar fashion to other scooter-sharing services that are popping up around the world, such as those offered by the likes of Bird and Lime, albeit with a different type of scooter. And this is significant for Gogoro as it aspires to be not just a purveyor of electric scooters but a sustainable solution to urban mobility.
The service is set to launch in Taoyuan in August, alongside another creation of Gogoro's, the EC-05 scooter. This new two-wheeler runs on the same swappable battery packs, but was developed in collaboration with Yamaha and will carry that company's branding along with some design tweaks, such as a more ergonomically positioned odometer.
You can check out the promo video for the EC-05 below.
Source: Gogoro via PRNewswire