The Gogoro Smartscooter was revealed at the Consumer Electronics Show. It is the first high-performance, zero emissions, connected two-wheeled electric vehicle on the market—but in many ways the bigger story today is actually the Gogoro Energy Network. The Gogoro Energy Network is a battery-swapping infrastructure that can be deployed across a city to give people access to portable power through battery vending machines called GoStations. The Smartscooter is the first to be integrated into the Gogoro Energy Network, and both will begin initial rollout later this year.
* Zero to 30 in 4.2 seconds
* Top speed of 60 mph
* Fifty-fifty weight distribution
* range of around 100 miles per charge
Pull up to a battery swap station [kind of like a Redbox DVD station], each of which holds eight 20-pound batteries. Pull your dead battery out of the scooter, swap it for a fresh on in the battery bank and off you go. It takes six seconds.
That makes the question of charging times—a significant speed bump for EV adoption—almost moot. Who cares how long a battery takes to charge, as long as it’s juiced up when you pick it up? “We no longer want to talk about charge time,” Luke says. “We want to talk about swap time.”
Gogoro received $150 million in funding.
Each battery station, which holds eight batteries, will cost less than $10,000. Each is roughly the size of an ATM, so installation shouldn’t be a major hassle, and stations can be added as demand increases. Luke calls it “modular capital investment.”
100 cities with 100 battery stations would cost less than $100 million. Plus they should be able to get places like convenience stores and supermarkets to host them like vending machines or to franchise out the vending machines.
There are places like Taipei, Taiwan and other places in Asia with a lot of scooters
Taiwan has about ten million scooters in there cities. Being able to switch to electric would greatly improve their air quality.
Chinese cities also have many scooters and electric bicycles.
SOURCES- Gogoro, Youtube, Wikipedia
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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