Taipei Times (TT): According to government statistics, 20,628 electric motorbikes were sold in Taiwan last year. How did Gogoro Inc (睿能創意) perform and what is the company’s outlook?
Chen Yang (陳彥揚): We sold 13,000 scooters last year [about 63 percent of the total] after selling 4,000 scooters in 2015. The strong sales is highly related to our battery swap network, GoStation. The more battery swap stations we built, the more scooters we sold.
Government support also plays an important role in boosting sales. Consumers receive as much as NT$25,000 in subsidies when they buy an electric scooter, which helps bring down the price of the “smart” scooter to close to that of a gasoline-fueled 125cc scooter.
Photo: Lisa Wang, Taipei Times
We have increased the number of GoStations to about 300. People can swap battery packs at some convenience stores, CPC Corp (台灣中油) gas stations or Mass Rapid Transit stations in Taipei. Our goal this year is to expand and ehnance the battery swap network to other major metropolitan cities including Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung.
Electric scooters are nothing new in Taiwan, but 99 percent of electric scooters sold were 50cc models before Gogoro joined the market. Last year, 125cc-level electric scooters outsold 50cc models for the first time in Taiwan and we believe this trend will continue. Sales 125cc-level electric scooters are expected to double from last year.
TT: How has Gogoro’s overseas expansion fared since it participated in an electric scooter leasing service in Berlin in August last year?
Chen: We have deployed 200 Gogoro scooters in different areas in Berlin after the leasing service program started last year. We also help manage battery swap networks in the city via a remote surveillance system from Gogoro’s headquarters in Taoyuan.
Given the fast uptake of the leasing service in Berlin, we are in talks with potential partners to start similar services in other European cities. We hope to see some good results next year.
Other than leasing services, we are looking at new business opportunities in Southeastern Asian markets such as Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and India. Those markets are much bigger than Taiwan and they support ‘clean’ energy. It is our goal to expand to markets with large potential sales.
TT: Will Gogoro increase its workforce to cope with growing sales?
Chen: The company has about 850 employees and we definitely need to increase the number of workers at our plants as sales increase. We also need to increase our workforce at maintenance centers as the number of outlets is on the rise. However, we do not have to significantly expand our energy management team, which handles the battery swap network, because most jobs can be done remotely using cloud technology and big data analysis. That team has 40 engineers.
TT: Why did Gogoro choose to design and produces its scooters in Taiwan?
Chen: We chose Taiwan, not the Pearl River Delta in China as some suggested, because it has the entire supply chain we need and has strong technological capabilities. The cluster effect is an important factor that helps shorten our product’s time to market. On top of that, Taiwan has a large population of scooter riders.
We design all major components including engine and energy solution systems in Taiwan. We authorize local suppliers to produce components for us. Then we assemble battery packs and scooters at our plants here. We also operate three laboratories — mechanical testing, electronics testing and engine driving testing — in Taiwan to ensure vehicle safety.
While we collaborate with Panasonic Corp in battery design, most components of Gogoro scooters are sourced from our 180 local component suppliers. Many of them are in Taichung and Changhua, which are home to the nation’s major mechanics, electronics and automobile component manufacturers.
TT: Gogoro has defined itself as an energy company rather than a scooter vendor. Does the company plan to provide its energy solutions to other scooter companies?
Chen: Company cofounder and chief executive officer Horace Luke’s (陸學森) vision is to create an energy company, or a portable energy solution provider, to reduce environmental pollution.
Making the electric scooter is the first step, but the company’s core technology is offering energy solutions and energy management systems. Gogoro has proved that battery swap systems are the best solution for the electric scooter segment and this energy solution could be used for different devices, not only scooters or cars.
We have received a lot of interests from other scooter venders, automakers and distributors from around the world since we launched our energy solutions and Gogoro scooters at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in 2015. A lot of business projects are being discussed. We do not have a timetable yet, but we hope to have good news very soon.
RESERVES ADEQUATE: The central bank governor rejected claims that Taiwan was facing a cash shortage, saying that its financial system had ample savings The New Taiwan dollar’s 3 percent fall this year despite record exports and a widening trade surplus stems from foreign investors cashing in on the local stock market’s technology-driven rally and moving funds overseas, central bank Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) told lawmakers yesterday. The NT dollar has become one of Asia’s weakest-performing major currencies this year. Foreign investors have reaped substantial gains from Taiwan’s surging stock market, prompting them to sell shares and rebalance their portfolios, Yang told a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee in Taipei. Their withdrawals have added to downward pressure on the NT dollar, offsetting support
‘ON SCHEDULE’: Chief executive officer Rick Tsai said that TSMC ‘remains our most important partner’ as MediaTek seeks to meet robust customer demand Chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday said it has secured a second customer for its customized artificial intelligence (AI) accelerator for data centers, while volume production of a second-generation chip for an existing customer is on track for early 2028, potentially easing market concerns about possible delays. This is a new customer and, crucially, not from China, MediaTek said. The remarks were meant to dismiss speculation that ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動), the parent company of TikTok, was the second customer for MediaTek’s new customized AI application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) business. “It is on track, on schedule. We understand there is some noise about the
The artificial intelligence (AI) supercycle should last for more than two decades, former Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger told an event in Taipei yesterday, dismissing fears of an AI bubble amid mounting skepticism over massive infrastructure investments. “We do see that there will be periods of disruption, correction, etc. So, we do not think of it as an AI bubble,” Gelsinger, who is a general partner at Playground Global LLC, said at the US venture capital firm’s second annual Taiwan Deep Tech Summit. However, “we’ll have some speed bumps as different areas and different technology disruptions occur along it,” Gelsinger
ROOM TO GROW: The company’s biggest bottleneck is still space, chief financial officer Joseph Tung said, adding that it was scouting existing factories to acquire ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控) yesterday raised its annual capital expenditure budget for the third time to US$11.5 billion, driven by expectations that customer demand next year would continue to outpace capacity, particularly for its leading-edge advanced packaging (LEAP) technologies used in artificial intelligence (AI) chips. ASE, the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, plans to add US$1 billion to its US$10.5 billion outlay on capacity expansion. About 60 percent of the US$500 million equipment budget would be allocated for LEAP and 40 percent for mainstream packaging technology capacity, ASE chief financial officer Joseph Tung (董宏思) told an online investors’
RSS