Kwang Yang Motor Co (光陽工業) yesterday said it has invested more than NT$40 million (US$1.44 million) into its battery subscription service to boost availability as electric scooters gain popularity in Taiwan.
Kwang Yang expects that more than 50 percent of people who own its electric scooters would be active users of the service in the initial stage, Linus Wu (吳俊龍), chief operating officer of Ionex Taiwan Co (台灣光捷), said on the sidelines of the service launch in Taipei.
Ionex is a fully owned electric scooter subsidiary of Kwang Yang, the nation’s biggest gasoline-powered scooter manufacturer.
Photo: Lisa Wang, Taipei Times
Kwang Yang has built a team with 50 employees to offer the battery on demand service, Wu said.
Subscribing to the service, owners of Kwang Yang Ionex 3.0 electric scooters would receive a fully charged battery replacement overnight.
To facilitate the new service, the company has set up its first battery operation center in New Taipei City, where Kwang Yang recharges batteries using green energy entirely.
“We want to offer diverse battery swapping options other than battery swapping stations. The new battery subscription service is not a replacement of any battery sources,” Wu said. “We will not stop deploying battery swapping stations.”
Kwang Yang has to date built 420 battery swapping stations, lagging behind its schedule as COVID-19 pandemic restrictions slowed its progress.
The company yesterday revised its target and said it aims to build 1,000 stations by the end of this year, rather than the 1,500 it had planned.
It is in talks with convenience store chain operators President Chain Store Corp (統一超商) and Hi-Life International Co Ltd (萊爾富), hypermarket operator Carrefour Taiwan (家樂福), as well as car washing operators to install battery swapping stations at their outlets, Wu said.
Meanwhile, Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter supplier, yesterday said it has won the bid to build battery swapping stations at 194 outlets of state-run CPC Taiwan, Corp (CPC, 台灣中油). The company currently has 437 battery swapping stations at CPC stations.
Gogoro has so far deployed 7,381 battery swapping stations, dubbed GoStation, nationwide for about 400,000 riders from Gogoro and Aeon Motor Co (宏佳騰), and other members of the “Powered by Gogoro Network” to get charged batteries.
Kwang Yang said CPC is one of its major partners, with about 100 swapping stations to be deployed at CPC stations.
The company is also in talks with other gasoline suppliers, including the one operated by Shang-long Transportation Co (山隆通運), to build battery swapping stations.
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