In world first, Gogoro’s EV battery swap stations becoming virtual power plants
You may already be familiar with Gogoro’s battery swapping stations, known as GoStations, which have famously created the de facto standard in swappable light electric vehicle batteries. But now the company is expanding beyond just EV battery swapping by teaming up with Enel X to create virtual power plants (VPPs) from its GoStations.
The Taiwanese battery swapping company Gogoro is active across a half dozen countries, but its domestic market is by far its largest with thousands of local battery swapping stations installed around the island country.
As part of a new partnership with Enel X that saw a successful pilot to test GoStations as virtual power plants (VPPs) in 2022, the pair has just announced the rollout of nearly 1,300 VPPs.
Another 1,200 stations should be up and running as VPPs by this summer, bringing the total number to 2,500.
The stations are designed to interact with Taiwan’s power grid, pausing their own charging to resupply energy back into the overtaxed grid when local demand maxes out the existing supply.
As Gogoro’s founder and CEO Horace Luke explained:
We are entering a new era of smart energy infrastructure, and by integrating the Gogoro Network with the Enel X Virtual Power Plant (VPP) in Taiwan we are providing a new energy resource. It is the first time this technology has been deployed this way in the world, and it creates a new Gogoro revenue stream beyond mobility.
We have always believed that time-shifting energy was key to enabling the sustainable transformation of energy and transportation, and Gogoro continues to be a key part of these advancements. Together, the Gogoro community is contributing to Taiwan’s net-zero targets by helping to integrate more variable power generation resources onto the grid. Today, when the energy grid begins to max out, we can dynamically pause our energy usage or provide energy back to the grid while continuing to operate our battery swapping service independently as needed.
Gogoro’s battery swap stations are highly sophisticated, allowing the company to remotely control the massive operations involved in hundreds of thousands of battery swaps every day, including from locations around the world.
In the past, we’ve seen instances of the stations “islanding” themselves during emergencies and power outages, allowing them to continue to operate without local power.
There was a case last year when a national-level power outage prevented gas stations from pumping fuel, but Gogoro-powered scooters could still operate and swap batteries to remain on the road because the stations remained functional thanks to the energy stored in their own battery packs.
Now functioning as VPPs, Gogoro’s battery swap stations can provide the same kind of energy independence for the national power grid as they have over years for their own operations.
The ability for VPPs to play an active role in stabilizing local and nationwide power grids is likely to become even more important as peak energy demand continues to rise.
Partnerships like these allow the use of innovative technology to help solve that problem, explained the head of Enel X Asia and Oceania Jeff Renaud:
Our work with Gogoro showcases the vital role that VPPs will play in the transition to renewable energy. As new distributed resources are built to electrify and decarbonize our energy use, VPPs will unlock greater sustainability impacts and improved financial returns by connecting these assets to the broader energy system. Our platform does this by aggregating thousands of these ‘new energy’ assets into a resource that can help balance the intermittency of large-scale renewable power stations. We believe our work with Gogoro is a world-leading demonstration of what VPPs can do, and we are honored and excited to continue growing our collaboration with them.
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If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you combine a fruit cart, a cargo bike, and a Piaggio Ape all in one vehicle, now you’ve got your answer. I submit, for your approval, this week’s feature for the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column – and it’s a beautiful doozie.
Feast your eyes on this salad slinging, coleslaw cruising, tuber taxiing produce chariot!
I think this electric vegetable trike might finally scratch the itch long felt by many of my readers. It seems every time I cover an electric trike, even the really cool ones, I always get commenters poo-poo-ing it for having two wheels in the rear instead of two wheels in the front. Well, here you go, folks!
Designed with two front wheels for maximum stability, this trike keeps your cucumbers in check through every corner. Because trust me, you don’t want to hit a pothole and suddenly be juggling peaches like you’re in Cirque du Soleil: Farmers Market Edition.
To avoid the extra cost of designing a linked steering system for a pair of front wheels, the engineers who brought this salad shuttle to life simply side-stepped that complexity altogether by steering the entire fixed front end. I’ve got articulating electric tractors that steer like this, and so if it works for a several-ton work machine, it should work for a couple hundred pounds of cargo bike.
Featuring a giant cargo bed up front with four cascading fruit baskets set up for roadside sales, this cargo bike is something of a blank slate. Sure, you could monetize grandma’s vegetable garden, or you could fill it with your own ideas and concoctions. Our exceedingly talented graphics wizard sees it as the perfect coffee and pastry e-bike for my new startup, The Handlebarista, and I’m not one to argue. Basically, the sky is the limit with a blank slate bike like this!
Sure, the quality doesn’t quite match something like a fancy Tern cargo bike. The rim brakes aren’t exactly confidence-inspiring, but at least there are three of them. And if they should all give out, or just not quite slow you down enough to avoid that quickly approaching brick wall, then at least you’ve got a couple hundred pounds of tomatoes as a tasty crumple zone.
The electrical system does seem a bit underpowered. With a 36V battery and a 250W motor, I don’t know if one-third of a horsepower is enough to haul a full load to the local farmer’s market. But I guess if the weight is a bit much for the little motor, you could always do some snacking along the way. On the other hand, all the pictures seem to show a non-electric version. So if this cart is presumably mobile on pedal power alone, then that extra motor assist, however small, is going to feel like a very welcome guest.
The $950 price is presumably for the electric version, since that’s what’s in the title of the listing, though I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. I’ve bought a LOT of stuff on Alibaba, including many electric vehicles, and the too-good-to-be-true price is always exactly that. In my experience, you can multiply the Alibaba price by 3-4x to get the actual landed price for things like these. Even so, $3,000-$4,000 wouldn’t be a terrible price, considering a lot of electric trikes stateside already cost that much and don’t even come with a quad-set of vegetable baskets on board!
I should also put my normal caveat in here about not actually buying one of these. Please, please don’t try to buy one of these awesome cargo e-trikes. This is a silly, tongue-in-cheek weekend column where I scour the ever-entertaining underbelly of China’s massive e-commerce site Alibaba in search of fun, quirky, and just plain awesomely weird electric vehicles. While I’ve successfully bought several fun things on the platform, I’ve also gotten scammed more than once, so this is not for the timid or the tight-budgeted among us.
That isn’t to say that some of my more stubborn readers haven’t followed in my footsteps before, ignoring my advice and setting out on their own wild journey. But please don’t be the one who risks it all and gets nothing in return. Don’t say I didn’t warn you; this is the warning.
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Environment
Podcast: Trump/GOP go after EV/solar, Tesla, Ford, GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
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 Trump’s Big Beautiful bill becoming law and going after EVs and solar, Tesla, Ford, and GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
Today’s episode is brought to you by Bosch Mobility Aftermarket—A global leader and trusted provider of automotive aftermarket parts. To celebrate Amazon Prime Day July 8th through 11th, Bosch Mobility is offering exclusive savings on must-have auto parts and tools. Learn more here.
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:
We now have a Patreon if you want to help us avoid more ads and invest more in our content. We have some awesome gifts for our Patreons and more coming.
Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast:
- Electrek FSGP 2025: New teams, new cars, same solar spirit
- Congress votes to send 2 million US jobs to China, increase deficit, energy costs
- Tesla (TSLA) confirms 384,000 deliveries in Q2 2025, right on expectations
- Tesla prototype sparks speculation: a Model Y, maybe slightly smaller
- Tesla launches Oasis Supercharger with solar farm and off-grid batteries
- Tesla unveils its LFP battery factory, claims it’s almost ready
- Here’s why Ford’s electric vehicle sales crashed by nearly a third in Q2
- The Chevy Equinox EV is GM’s breakout star, but that’s not the only surprise
- Xpeng launches G7, a new Tesla Model Y competitor for just $27,000
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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