Electric scooter maker Gogoro Inc (睿能創意) yesterday said that sales last month hit a record high of 22,750 units, helping it remain the nation’s No. 2 vendor with a 21.27 percent market share.
The Taoyuan-based company’s aggregated sales last year reached 145,678 units — an all-time high, it said in a statement.
Since 2015, Gogoro has sold 274,623 electric scooters, including those it assembled for Yamaha Motor Co of Japan, Aeon Motor Co (宏佳騰), Motive Power Industry Co (摩特動力) and Suzuki Motor Corp.
In Taiwan last year, electric scooters made up 18.63 percent of total scooter sales, compared with 9.5 percent a year earlier, the company said.
More manufacturers are expected to join the electric scooter market and launch new models this year, which would speed up the shift from fossil fuel-powered vehicles, Gogoro said.
“With the proliferation of battery swapping stations and the number of new members in the ‘Powered by Gogoro Network,’ Taiwan led the world in replacing fossil fuel-powered scooters with electric models in 2019,” chief marketing executive Chen Yen-yang (陳彥揚) said in the statement.
The momentum should extend into this year, Chen added.
Gogoro said that the number of battery swapping stations nationwide rose to 1,500 last year from 1,292 a year earlier.
The company said it expects new government subsidies to encourage 5 million people to switch from fossil fuel-powered scooters to electric scooters, meeting the government’s phase 7 emission standards, which reduce toxic emissions considerably from phase 6.
Under the two-year program, people would receive subsidies of up to NT$24,000 from the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA), the Industrial Development Bureau and local governments when they replace older scooters with new environmentally friendly models.
As of yesterday, the bureau’s subsidy was reduced by 30 percent to NT$7,000 per vehicle from NT$10,000, while the EPA’s NT$5,000 subsidy applies to new electric scooters and fossil fuel-powered scooters that satisfy the phase 7 emission standards.
GoShare, Gogoro’s ride-sharing service, on Tuesday said that it has signed up 400,000 members since its launch about three months ago.
Local rivals Wemo Corp (威摩科技) and Hotai Leasing Corp (和運租車) had as of Oct. 31 last year signed up 250,000 members and 210,000 members respectively.
Wemo, which provides ride-sharing services in Taipei, New Taipei City and Kaohsiung, expects its membership to double to 600,000 this year, the company said in October.
Shares in Taiwan closed at a new high yesterday, the first trading day of the new year, as contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) continued to break records amid an artificial intelligence (AI) boom, dealers said. The TAIEX closed up 386.21 points, or 1.33 percent, at 29,349.81, with turnover totaling NT$648.844 billion (US$20.65 billion). “Judging from a stronger Taiwan dollar against the US dollar, I think foreign institutional investors returned from the holidays and brought funds into the local market,” Concord Securities Co (康和證券) analyst Kerry Huang (黃志祺) said. “Foreign investors just rebuilt their positions with TSMC as their top target,
REVENUE PERFORMANCE: Cloud and network products, and electronic components saw strong increases, while smart consumer electronics and computing products fell Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday posted 26.51 percent quarterly growth in revenue for last quarter to NT$2.6 trillion (US$82.44 billion), the strongest on record for the period and above expectations, but the company forecast a slight revenue dip this quarter due to seasonal factors. On an annual basis, revenue last quarter grew 22.07 percent, the company said. Analysts on average estimated about NT$2.4 trillion increase. Hon Hai, which assembles servers for Nvidia Corp and iPhones for Apple Inc, is expanding its capacity in the US, adding artificial intelligence (AI) server production in Wisconsin and Texas, where it operates established campuses. This
H200 CHIPS: A source said that Nvidia has asked the Taiwanese company to begin production of additional chips and work is expected to start in the second quarter Nvidia Corp is scrambling to meet demand for its H200 artificial intelligence (AI) chips from Chinese technology companies and has approached contract manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to ramp up production, sources said. Chinese technology companies have placed orders for more than 2 million H200 chips for this year, while Nvidia holds just 700,000 units in stock, two of the people said. The exact additional volume Nvidia intends to order from TSMC remains unclear, they said. A third source said that Nvidia has asked TSMC to begin production of the additional chips and work is expected to start in the second
US President Donald Trump on Friday blocked US photonics firm HieFo Corp’s US$3 million acquisition of assets in New Jersey-based aerospace and defense specialist Emcore Corp, citing national security and China-related concerns. In an order released by the White House, Trump said HieFo was “controlled by a citizen of the People’s Republic of China” and that its 2024 acquisition of Emcore’s businesses led the US president to believe that it might “take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States.” The order did not name the person or detail Trump’s concerns. “The Transaction is hereby prohibited,”
RSS