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.
POOR INTERNAL CONTROLS: Insurance Bureau Director-General Shih Chiung-hwa said the company is expected to get back on track while its chairman is suspended The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday fined Shin Kong Life Insurance Co (新光人壽) NT$27.6 million (US$939,415) for a reckless investment that endangered its solvency, and suspended its chairman Eugene Wu (吳東進) for poor supervision. The penalty is the second-highest in a single case after Nan Shan Life Insurance Co (南山人壽) was fined NT$30 million in September last year and its chairman Du Ying-tzyong (杜英宗) suspended for two years, the commission said. In three rounds of special and regular examinations conducted since last year, the commission found that Shin Kong Life had given too much power to an asset and liability management committee
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