Gogoro delivery day: I got one of the first battery-swapping Gogoro electric scooters outside of Asia
Gogoro’s battery-swapping network is world-renowned for making EV charging obsolete in dozens of models of electric scooters and motorbikes. The system uses smart connected batteries and thousands of swap stations that allow riders to roll up, swap batteries, and ride off — all in less time than a fuel fill-up on an ICE vehicle. And now that I’ve gotten my own Gogoro S2 ABS electric scooter, I’ve finally had the chance to experience the system firsthand.
Gogoro going global
Gogoro has already begun expanding from its home of Taiwan to other Asian two-wheeler hot spots like India, China, and Indonesia. But when it came time for the company’s first westward expansion, they didn’t have to go too far to land in Israel.
And in true sabra style, I made sure to elbow my way to the front of the line to finally get my hands on my own Gogoro scooter.
Both the Gogoro S2 ABS and the Gogoro 2 Plus models are currently being imported to Israel. I chose the Gogoro S2 ABS due to its higher performance and awesome iridescent indigo paint job.
The S2 ABS is priced at 20,000 NIS (US $5,600), compared to the 2 Plus at 17,000 NIS (US $4,790). Both of those prices are higher in Israel due to exorbitant local taxes. For example, an entry-level Tesla Model 3 SR costs $48,000 in the US but closer to $69,000 in Israel. So there’s a decent chance that if Gogoro comes to your country, you’ll pay less than us.
Gogoro S2 ABS delivered
The delivery is more of a pickup, which happens at the local dealership. Despite being technology-packed, the Gogoro S2 ABS scooter is actually quite easy to operate and the overview only takes about five minutes to learn the controls, features like proximity unlocking, etc. In fact, most of the time is spent creating an account with Gogoro in the company’s app, which lets you control the scooter and find battery swap stations.
Due to Gogoro’s unique model of creating both the battery swapping network and electric vehicles that use it, the company had to partner with two different outfits to make it all work in another country. Metro Motor serves as the motorcycle importer/dealer while Paz Group manages the swap stations.
Right now there are around a dozen of Gogoro’s GoStations spread around the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, with most at Paz’s gas stations and a couple at Metro’s dealerships.
You can find the swap stations in the app and use it to navigate to them, though once you visit them for the first time, you just kind of remember where they are.
Gogoro’s battery-swapping procedure
Swapping is amazingly simple. There’s no membership card, no NFC key, no nothing.
I simply roll up to swap station, slide my used batteries in the dock, and the machine spits out two freshly charged batteries. I then pop them back into my Gogoro S2 ABS scooter and ride off. The entire thing takes perhaps 45 seconds, including parking and leaving.
It’s that simple because the batteries are smart enough to know whose scooter they were in, and they communicate all of that info back to Gogoro’s home base. When I pop the batteries into the dock, the GoStation knows they came out of my scooter.
It then decides which batteries to give me based on how I ride. A higher-performance rider will likely get newer, fresher batteries while a granny rider might be given batteries that are a few years old and still work fine, but would drain faster at full power. At least that’s the way the system works in Taiwan. Here the batteries are all about a month old, so we’re all getting the good stuff.
The GoStations are distributed throughout the city so that you’re basically never further than 2-3 miles (3-5 kilometers) from a battery swap station, and usually you’re much closer than that.
I’ve only had the Gogoro S2 ABS for about two weeks, but I’ve put 202 miles (325 km) on it so far, and so I’ve gotten a pretty good feeling of it as far as range goes.
I find that if I’m staying in the city then I can push my range close to 60 miles (96 km). But when I venture out of Tel Aviv or take the urban highways that let me open the scooter up to its top speed of 59 mph (95 km/h), my range is closer to 45 miles (72 km).
Long highway rides with my wife on back sap even more energy.
Neither of us are big people, but I find that fast highway riding with two people can easily cut the range in half compared to slow city riding with a single rider.
A few days ago my wife and I went to a party in Netanya, which is a couple cities north of Tel Aviv. With entirely highway riding and two people on board, I got the worst range so far at around 37 miles or 60 km (based on around 30 miles between swaps with 20% battery remaining). But even in that “worst-case scenario,” I had no problem traveling to multiple cities away from the closest battery swap station. On the way back, we stopped at the first station on our way and instantly had a full charge again.
That was a bit of a pioneering excursion, since as you can see by the map below, we poked way the heck out there and far from any local swap stations back in Tel Aviv. But with a promised three dozen or so stations by the end of this year and over a hundred stations in the next two years spread out over a larger geographic area, you can see how charging becomes a thing of the past. Instead of planning how much range you have on a charge, you’ll simply stop by a swap station whenever you start getting low. You know, kind of like the gas station model. Except that instead of needing the entire footprint of a gas station, you only need the space taken up by something the size of a couple refrigerators.
How’s the Gogoro S2 ABS itself?
The Gogoro S2 ABS is an awesome electric scooter for the city. Even putting the convenient battery swapping aside for a moment, just the scooter is already a perfect urban vehicle.
I can go anywhere in the city while slicing through traffic (lane splitting is legal in Israel), meaning I usually get where I’m going in half the time of cars or less. I use a tiny fraction of the energy while doing it. And it’s the most fun way to cruise!
The seat is comfortable for two riders, and the 7.2 kW liquid-cooled motor is plenty peppy to launch me out ahead of all the other cars and motorcycles when the light turns green. The ABS braking offers quick, confident stops, and the regenerative braking means I don’t even have to rely on the disc brakes very much.
The scooter is smart enough to unlock when it senses my phone as I walk up to it. That’s a feature I love, since it’s great to have one less key in my pocket.
Even smaller touches like the extra deep bag hook are a great addition to a city scooter that is likely going to be carrying groceries. I picked my wife up at the mall just last week after she finished “supporting the economy,” and all of her bags fit right in there without feeling like we’d lose anything at 50 mph on the way home.
I’m a big fan of the included storage under the seat. It’s big enough to fit a full face helmet, not just a small half or three-quarter helmet.
It also means you don’t have to add a rear cargo box just to get storage, which can be a great utility option but kind of ruins the lines of the pretty scooter. I may add a storage box at some point, but I’m trying to avoid it. Having all that underseat storage helps me justify leaving the box off while still having plenty of utility storage. I’ve filled that underseat storage area with groceries, shopping, clothing, you name it.
I even leave my armored motorcycle jacket in there when I park somewhere so that I don’t have to carry it with me.
Speaking of which, here’s a quick note on safety: I always support wearing all of the proper safety gear all of the time. That’s the ideal situation. In some of these pictures you’ll see me wearing less than that. When I’m staying in the city and especially in my neighborhood, I sometimes get a little more cavalier (hence the T-shirt and the three-quarter helmet). But when I’m taking faster roads, I usually opt for my full motorcycle gear. That means armored jacket and armored jeans, moto gloves, full-face helmet, etc. We all have to make our own riding decisions, but you should consider what’s at stake, especially when riding at higher speeds on larger roads.
Gogoro has an amazingly wide range of accessories on their Taiwanese site, but we don’t have many accessories available yet in Israel.
I’m excited to add a bunch of new parts to my scooter, including a rear seat rest to make my wife feel more secure, an organizer in the underseat storage, front and rear cameras, perhaps some fancier mirrors and more.
But first I have to figure out how to order that stuff from Gogoro Taiwan.
Are there any downsides?
So far there’s only one downside I can find. The scooter is surprisingly loud.
The noise comes from the chain drive, which is necessary due to the mid-motor design. Unlike my NIU electric moped, which uses a hub motor, the Gogoro uses a central motor with a chain drive to transfer power to the rear wheel.
There’s actually a Gates belt drive version as well, and I wish that we had the quieter belt option here in Israel. But for now, this is what we have. I’ve gotten used to the chain noise, but for such a quiet scooter it is still quite noticeable. You’ll never hear the chain on ICE-powered scooters and motorcycles due to the loud exhaust, but it’s all you hear on electric two-wheelers.
More to come!
This is far from a full review, as I’ve only had the Gogoro S2 ABS for a few weeks.
I’ll be sure to follow up with an in-depth review, including a video review, after I’ve spent some more time on this machine.
Until then, let me know what questions you have in the comments section below. I’ll be sure to address the areas you’re most interested in during my follow-up review.
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Tesla has launched a new accessory enabling you to “Macgyver” a couple of power outlets from the Cybertruck’s charge port.
It appears to be designed for the new cheaper Cybertruck, which doesn’t have power outlets in its bed.
Earlier this week, Tesla launched the Cybertruck Long Range RWD: a new, cheaper, and badly nerfed version of the electric pickup truck.
The new version is extremely disappointing as it is $9,000 more expensive than the Cybertruck RWD was supposed to be, and while it has more range than originally planned, Tesla has removed a ton of features, including some important ones.
Here’s what you lose with the Cybertruck RWD:
- You get a single motor RWD instead of Dual Motor AWD
- You lose the adaptive air suspension
- No motorized tonneau, but you have an optional $750 soft tonneau
- Textile seats instead of vegan leather
- Fewer speakers
- No rear screen for the backseat
- No power outlets in the bed
The last one has been pretty disappointing, as it can’t be that expensive to include, and Tesla is basically removing $20,000 worth of features for only a $10,000 difference with the Dual Motor Cybertruck.
But the automaker appears to have come up with a partial solution.
Tesla has launched a $80 ‘Powershare Outlet Adapter’ on its online store:
When combined with Tesla’s Gen 3 Mobile Connector plugged into the Cybertruck’s charge port, it gives you two 120V 20A power outlets.
Tesla describes the product:
Powershare Outlet Adapter allows you to power electronic devices using Mobile Connector and your Powershare-equipped vehicle’s battery. To use this adapter, plug Mobile Connector’s handle into your Powershare-equipped vehicle’s charge port and connect the adapter to the other end of your Mobile Connector. You can then use this adapter to plug in any compatible electronic device you want to power.
For now, Tesla says that this only works for the Cybertruck and you have to buy the $300 mobile charging connector, which doesn’t come with the truck.
Electrek’s Take
I guess it’s better than nothing, but I’m still super disappointed in the new trim. It makes no sense right now.
Not only you lose the 2x 120V, 1x 240V outlets in the bed, but you also lose the 2x 120V outlets in the cabin. Now, you can can pay $380 to have a “Macgyver” solution for 2 120V outlets in the back.
I’m convinced that Tesla designed this trim simply to make the $80,000 Cybertruck AWD look better value-wise.
It looks like Tesla took out about $20,000 worth of features while giving buyers only a $10,000 discount.
It’s just the latest example of Tesla losing its edge.
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The International Maritime Organization, a UN agency which regulates maritime transport, has voted to implement a global cap on carbon emissions from ocean shipping and a penalty on entities that exceed that limit.
After a weeklong meeting of the Marine Environment Protection Committee of the IMO and decades of talks, countries have voted to implement binding carbon reduction targets including a gradually-reducing cap on emissions and associated penalties for exceeding that cap.
Previously, the IMO made another significant environmental move when it transitioned the entire shipping industry to lower-sulfur fuels in 2020, moving towards improving a longstanding issue with large ships outputting extremely high levels of sulfur dioxide emissions, which harm human health and cause acid rain.
Today’s agreement makes the shipping industry the first sector to agree on an internationally mandated target to reduce emissions along with a global carbon price.
The agreement includes standards for greenhouse gas intensity from maritime shipping fuels, with those standards starting in 2028 and reducing through 2035. The end goal is to reach net-zero emissions in shipping by 2050.
Companies that exceed the carbon limits set by the standard will have to pay either $100 or $380 per excess ton of emissions, depending on how much they exceed limits by. These numbers are roughly in line with the commonly-accepted social cost of carbon, which is an attempt to set the equivalent cost borne by society by every ton of carbon pollution.
Money from these penalties will be put into a fund that will reward lower-emissions ships, research into cleaner fuels, and support nations that are vulnerable to climate change.
That means that this agreement represents a global “carbon price” – an attempt to make polluters pay the costs that they shift onto everyone else by polluting.
Why carbon prices matter
The necessity of a carbon price has long been acknowledged by virtually every economist. In economic terms, pollution is called a “negative externality,” where a certain action imposes costs on a party that isn’t responsible for the action itself. That action can be thought of as a subsidy – it’s a cost imposed by the polluter that isn’t being paid by the polluter, but rather by everyone else.
Externalities distort a market because they allow certain companies to get away with cheaper costs than they should otherwise have. And a carbon price is an attempt to properly price that externality, to internalize it to the polluter in question, so that they are no longer being subsidized by everyone else’s lungs. This also incentivizes carbon reductions, because if you can make something more cleanly, you can make it more cheaply.
Many people have suggested implementing a carbon price, including former republican leadership (before the party forgot literally everything about how economics works), but political leadership has been hesitant to do what’s needed because it fears the inevitable political backlash driven by well-funded propaganda entities in the oil industry.
For that reason, most carbon pricing schemes have focused on industrial processes, rather than consumer goods. This is currently happening in Canada, which recently (unwisely) retreated from its consumer carbon price but still maintains a price on the largest polluters in the oil industry.
But until today’s agreement by the IMO, there had been no global agreement of the same in any industry. There are single-country carbon prices, and international agreements between certain countries or subnational entities, often in the form of “cap-and-trade” agreements which implement penalties, and where companies that reduce emissions earn credits that they can then sell to companies that exceed limits (California has a similar program in partnership with with Quebec), but no previous global carbon price in any industry.
Carbon prices opposed by enemies of life on Earth
Unsurprisingly, entities that favor destruction of life on Earth, such as the oil industry and those representing it (Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the bought-and-paid oil stooge who is illegally squatting in the US Oval Office), opposed these measures, claiming they would be “unworkable.”
Meanwhile, island nations whose entire existence is threatened by climate change (along with the ~2 billion people who will have to relocate by the end of the century due to rising seas) correctly said that the move isn’t strong enough, and that even stronger action is needed to avoid the worse effects of climate change.
The island nations’ position is backed by science, the oil companies’ position is not.
While these new standards are historic and need to be lauded as the first agreement of their kind, there is still more work to be done and incentives that need to be offered to ensure that greener technologies are available to help fulfill the targets. Jesse Fahnestock, Director of Decarbonisation at the Global Maritime Forum, said:
While the targets are a step forward, they will need to be improved if they are to drive the rapid fuel shift that will enable the maritime sector to reach net zero by 2050. While we applaud the progress made, meeting the targets will require immediate and decisive investments in green fuel technology and infrastructure. The IMO will have opportunities to make these regulations more impactful over time, and national and regional policies also need to prioritise scalable e-fuels and the infrastructure needed for long-term decarbonisation.
One potential solution could be IMO’s “green corridors,” attempts to establish net-zero-emission shipping routes well in advance of the IMO’s 2050 net-zero target.
And, of course, this is only one industry, and one with a relatively low contribution to global emissions. While the vast majority of global goods are shipped over the ocean, it’s still responsible for only around 3% of global emissions. To see the large emissions reductions we need to avoid the worst effects of climate change, other more-polluting sectors – like automotive, agriculture (specifically animal agriculture), construction and heating – all could use their own carbon price to help add a forcing factor to drive down their emissions.
Lets hope that the IMO’s move sets that example, and we see more of these industries doing the right thing going forward (and ignoring those enemies of life on Earth listed above).
The agreement still has to go through a final step of approval on October, but this looks likely to happen.
Even without a carbon price, many homeowners can save money on their electricity bills today by going solar. And if you’re considering going solar, it’s always a good idea to get quotes from a few installers. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them.
Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here. – ad*
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In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss the new Tesla Cybertruck RWD, more tariff mayhem, Lucid buying Nikola, and more.
The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel.
As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in.
After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps:
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Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast:
Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4:00 p.m. ET (or the video after 5 p.m. ET):
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