Horace Luke hopes the electric Smartscooters from his Taipei-based company, Gogoro, will help snuff out some of Taiwan\u2019s air pollution, as well as provide a fun and efficient ride for consumers. The industrial country has high levels of PM2.5 (particulate matter at 2.5 micrometers), pollution caused by decades of heavy manufacturing and unfettered vehicle exhaust\u2014particularly from motorbikes.
\nGogoro, founded in 2011 by CEO Luke and CTO Matt Taylor, rolled out its scooters in July. The gorgeously designed, fully customizable bikes go from zero to 30 mph in about four seconds and top out at 60 mph, all without a single belch of emissions. Powered by an electric drivetrain and a pair of swappable lithium-ion batteries, the scooter connects to the driver\u2019s smartphone and the cloud so that its performance can be continually analyzed and improved. And when the batteries wear down\u2014as they\u2019re likely to do every 60 miles or so\u2014the driver can simply pull over to a roadside charging kiosk (a \u201cGoStation\u201d) to grab fresh power cells and drop off used ones for recharging. All this at a $4,100 price tag (plus a battery lease agreement) that leaves the competition in the dust.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to create excitement around consumer products that are going to hit the heart of a 20- or 25-year-old as they\u2019re getting out of college and making decisions about transportation,\u201d Luke says. \u201cInstead of buying a vehicle that would be burning gas for 10 years, they could go and use something that is electric.\u201d
\nWhile this may sound like a pipe dream, the idea became a reality thanks to $50 million in venture backing\u2014in particular, the $40 million invested by Taiwanese entrepreneur and billionaire Samuel Yin in a Series A round in 2011, which trimmed years off production and helped the company quickly ramp up to more than 450 employees.
\nGogoro\u2019s founders met while working at Microsoft; Luke was the original creative director at Xbox, and Taylor was developing mobile devices. They next worked together at HTC, racing to put smartphones into the hands of the masses. And while the iPhone ultimately beat their effort to market, the pair helped turn the once-unknown Asian computer company into a tech-industry giant. For his efforts, Luke was tapped to be the next CEO at HTC, but he declined in order to start Gogoro.
\nAccording to Taylor, Gogoro\u2019s potential for success rides on the global energy economy. Gas prices are rising at a rate of 1 to 2 percent per year, plus inflation; meanwhile, the cost of electricity generation is going down. And companies like Tesla have helped drive down the per-kilowatt-hour cost of batteries.
\nAfter establishing itself in Taipei, Gogoro has its sights set on expanding to another megacity.
\n\u201cWe think that there\u2019s a solid opportunity for providing insane, cutting-edge electric vehicle technology throughout Southeast Asia, at a price point that can be afforded through the region and be a synonymous replacement for what they\u2019re driving today,\u201d Taylor says.
\nLuke and Taylor\u2019s hope is that young, design-conscious city drivers will choose Gogoro\u2019s Smartscooters over dirty, soot-belching clunkers, which can emit more than five times the hydrocarbons of a car.
\n\u201cConsumers are what\u2019s going to change the world, not necessarily industries or governments,\u201d Luke says. \u201cThey\u2019re voting with their own money, their own habits\u2014that is what\u2019s going to change how people use energy in the world.\u201d
\nBattery Hacks
\nGogoro is banking on GoStation to power its long-term plan
\nEvery city Gogoro enters will need a network of battery-swapping GoStations to support it. \u201cThe GoStation is one of the things that we really focused on,\u201d says Matt Taylor, CTO. \u201cHow could we build this machine to be much\u00a0more cost-effective than [past] battery-swap efforts?\u201d
\nHe likens the stations to soda machines; Gogoro will place them at various locations and service them regularly. \u201cIt\u2019s what we think we need to get rid of the range anxiety\u00a0that people\u00a0have had with electrics to date,\u201d he explains.
\nThe batteries in the Smartscooter start to\u00a0degrade after about five years, just like the lithium-ion cell that powers your smartphone. So to keep\u00a0its scooters running as long as advertised, Gogoro plans to pull power cells from circulation\u00a0once the\u00a0battery reaches 80 percent of capacity and replace\u00a0it with a fresh, new unit.\u00a0The old batteries won\u2019t\u00a0be thrown away; Gogoro plans to repurpose them\u00a0in an alternate energy market that the company is\u00a0just now beginning to develop.
\nThis might seem like an afterthought, but in fact, it\u2019s a forward-thinking part of the business model. When consumers buy a Gogoro Smartscooter, they sign up for a monthly contract that gives them access to the batteries and battery-swapping GoStations. Gogoro actually owns the\u00a0batteries and, according\u00a0to the company\u2019s math, these power cells pay for themselves after about 500 charges. So by the time they start losing their original capacity, in what is called their \u201csecond life,\u201d they become pure profit.
\n\u201cThe work has started to build the pieces of hardware that are needed for us to take the battery voltages and convert those into the AC voltages that would be needed by a data center or to run a store or to back up a home,\u201d Taylor says.
\nGogoro estimates that it won\u2019t have enough non-bike batteries to move forward with this plan for several years, but the wheels are in motion.
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