Gogoro Inc (睿能創意) yesterday unveiled the pricing and sales programs for its electric scooter, which is to be released on the local market on July 25.
“We have been very well received by people who have tested Gogoro Smartscooter,” Gogoro cofounder and chief executive officer Horace Luke (陸學森) told a news conference, citing 97.4 percent of the 3,521 people who have tested the electric vehicles saying that they were satisfied with the driving experience.
The Gogoro Smartscooter is priced at NT$128,000 (US$4,095), along with a basic monthly expense of NT$899 for an unlimited battery-swapping service, chief marketing officer Peng Ming-i (彭明義) said.
Photo: CNA
In a bid to catch the eye of people who are looking for faster speed performance with electric scooters, the company also unveiled the Gogoro Plus scooter, priced at NT$138,000, with better efficiency and a faster top speed of 95kph compared with Gogoro’s 85kph, Peng said.
The price of a Gogoro Smartscooter might be higher than the average scooter at NT$81,000, but with the subsidies from the government and a fixed battery-swapping expense, the running costs of electric scooters are lower than traditional scooters, Peng said.
Consumers can apply for subsidies of up to NT$20,000 from government agencies for purchasing electric scooters, he said.
Those who order an electric scooter between June 27 and July 24 would also be entitled to a free battery-swapping service for two years, Peng said.
The company plans to increase the number of battery-swapping stations from 32 to 150 stations, situated at gas stations and parking lots in Taipei and New Taipei City, by the end of this year, Peng said.
He said infrastructure expenses for battery-swapping GoStations could cost from “several hundred thousand New Taiwan dollars” to “several million,” depending on the scale of installment for batteries.
“Such new business models require a lot of investment in the beginning... We do not expect the company to make a big loss in its first year,” he said.
Peng said Gogoro does not have plans to expand its business into other cities in Taiwan or other nations for the time being.
Gogoro, which is backed mainly by Taiwanese tycoon Samuel Yin (尹衍樑) and HTC Corp (宏達電) chairwoman Cher Wang (王雪紅), in January unveiled its first Smartscooter at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The firm’s paid-in capital totaled NT$821 million, according to the company’s latest filing with the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
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