Gogoro Pulse first ride: Testing the most high-tech performance electric scooter
When Gogoro rolled out its new high-performance electric scooter, the Pulse, the world got its first glimpse of an entirely new side of the company. Best known for its battery-swapping system and cute, brightly-colored scooters, the Pulse launched an edgy new look for Gogoro. But even more importantly, it also showed off an entire suite of new high-tech innovations.
And so when I received an invite to be the first Westerner to test ride the Pulse and share the experience with the world, I jumped on it. Every company seems to proclaim that their new e-scooter is like none other before, but only the Gogoro Pulse is one of the few that can truly mean it. This electric scooter marks a paradigm shift in what is possible for this form factor and with Gogoro’s swappable battery standard.
Gogoro Pulse First Ride Video
To get a sense of what it’s like to throw a leg over this scooter, check out my video below.
But don’t forget to keep reading afterward, for all of the fun details!
I arrived early in the morning at a nondescript, largely abandoned airstrip in central Taiwan. There weren’t any planes on the tarmac, but lined up at the end of the single runway was something that looked just as fast and aerodynamic – the Gogoro Pulse electric scooter.
In fact, there were around a dozen of the silvery, angular scooters. Lined up shoulder to shoulder, they beckoned for an afternoon of fun. I soon found myself shoulder to shoulder as well, though it was with around 40 local journalists, all as eager as I was to get a first ride on the powerful, techie new electric two-wheeler. There was so much shared excitement in the air, I almost didn’t notice the “one of these things isn’t like the other” moment I was having, at least until the Mandarin started flying.
After a short safety briefing (that I thankfully had a translator for, thanks Cameron!) and a chance to gear up, we were off to the races. Literally. There was a drag strip set up as one of several testing stations, making full use of the short runway to test the most powerful mode on the scooter: Launch Mode. It unlocks every last watt available from the 9 kW-rated powertrain, letting riders absolutely fly off the starting line. But more on that in a moment.
First, I got to test out the traction control. In a sandy area off to the side of the airstrip, a coned-off section of loose sand and dust made for the perfect (i.e., worst) conditions. The scooter comes with a specially designed Dirt Mode meant to help keep traction on loose surfaces like this. It relies on the company’s new Hypercore, a powerful smart system that delivers state-of-the-art traction control.
I’m not much of a dirt rider myself, and you’re more likely to find me riding elbow distance between two delivery trucks than hugging the berms on trails. But I still did my best to get the scooter sideways.
Even in that loose and silty soil, each time I felt the rear starting to fishtail, the traction control helped me bring it back and keep the rubber side down. I was sure I would lose it a few times, but somehow the Pulse seemed to anticipate my pending disaster in the turns and take care of the hard parts for me.
From there, I moved to the slalom course, which was a series of cones set up on the angle strip. Gogoro’s pro rider showed me a demo first, in which he rode so fast and cornered so hard through the slalom that he dragged the edge of the side stand more than once. I certainly wasn’t about to push it that hard and leave bits of steel on the asphalt, but I still enjoyed pushing the scooter through the course and feeling how easy it was to flick back and forth.
Of course, the main event was that Launch Mode demonstration, where I got to line back up on the main strip with a set of Christmas tree lights counting me down for good measure.
To enable this ultra-fast takeoff program, you have to initiate launch mode with a video game-style series of secret inputs, the last of which includes holding in the rear brake lever like a clutch. If you put the cheat code in successfully, you’ll get the prompt and the scooter will literally start shaking. It’s actually just the mid-mounted motor cleverly rocking itself to create the simulation of a high-revving engine ready to pop the clutch. And to launch, that’s exactly what you do – except that the clutch is really the rear brake lever, and releasing it sends you flying down the road at peak acceleration. It’s hard to explain what 378 Nm (279 lb-ft) of torque at the rear wheel feels like, but I definitely saw another journalist almost slip off the back of the scooter when he wasn’t expecting the acceleration to be so punchy.
I only had 250 meters (820 feet) before the “STOP” section of the course began, but I was already into the triple digits on the speedometer, which converting km/h into mph means I had just surpassed 62 mph before having to quickly engage the brakes as the end of the course neared.
Each test was designed to show off another aspect of the Gogoro’s Pulse performance, from the traction control to the maneuverability and finally the insane power that can be unleashed by those brave enough to demand it.
But what’s perhaps even more impressive isn’t the groundbreaking performance but rather the technology that ties it all together.
The Gogoro Pulse shares several features that sound more at home on new sports cars than on an electric scooter. The scooter’s Smart Cockpit dashboard is built around a massive 10.25-inch panoramic HD touch display that integrates with Gogoro’s iQ Touch HD user interface. The new iQ Touch HD system offers a variety of new features and services, including different ride modes, turn-by-turn GPS navigation with real-time traffic information, and Gogoro GoStation locations for quick and convenient battery swaps. Fortunately, I was glad to see that there are still easy-to-use push-button controls and dials. Touch screens are nice for something things, but I’ll never want to give up the tactile feedback of real buttons and knobs. The mode selector is an oversized and generously knurled physical knob, which makes you feel like you’re selecting functions in a fighter jet cockpit. Now THAT’S a knob!
I’m glad to hear that turn-by-turn GPS navigation will be available on the screen, though that feature wasn’t quite finished during our testing. I can picture in my head what a map looks like on a giant screen though, so I’m just glad to hear it’s coming. That also means I don’t need to keep my phone on the handlebars anymore when I want to use a nav app – I can just let the scooter’s massive display handle it for me.
Gogoro’s Smart Cockpit also makes the Pulse the first two-wheel vehicle in the world to be powered by Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon QWM2290 digital chassis. Again, this is stuff that has no business being on a two-wheeler, at least not until Gogoro decided that riders shouldn’t have to take a backseat to drivers anymore in the technology department.
And then there’s the headlight. Or I guess I should say, headlights. An array of 13 individual LED units fire on and off dynamically depending on riding conditions, helping to throw the beam closer or further depending on speed, as well as angling the light around curves when necessary, all without any physically moving parts.
And while I didn’t actually test this part out during the test riding since you just can’t go very far within the confines of an airstrip, the scooters obviously make use of Gogoro’s world-famous battery-swapping standard.
That means you get the benefits of Gogoro’s recognizable bright green batteries that are spread all over the markets where Gogoro operates. In Tapei, riders are never more than a few hundred meters from a battery-swapping station. Across the island, thousands of stations perform hundreds of thousands of battery swaps daily.
And now Gogoro is in more countries across Asia than I can keep track of anymore. The options are growing seemingly every month.
The beauty of this battery-swapping system is that range simply doesn’t matter anymore. Who cares if the scooter can get 50 km or 150 km of range? It doesn’t really matter since, in both situations, you’ll probably pass 100 different battery-swapping stations during that time.
So as you can see, this isn’t just a high-performance electric scooter. It’s also a high tech vehicle that takes advantage of much of the tech we generally associate with luxury cars, but has now been brought to us as riders.
Having ridden around Taipei recently, I can tell you that this is probably more scooter than many people will need. It’s just so much power and performance that it’s the equivalent of a sports car in a city. But then again, sports cars are fun for the simple fact that they’re fun, so even locked in a city, the Pulse would be a blast. But once you can get out onto some faster roads and really open it up, that’s where the scooter will come alive.
If staying in a city, that Launch Mode can still be fun, but I don’t think many people need to fly off as quickly as this scooter can each time the light turns green. But what it does do is give riders the opportunity to do more with their ride. The same bike that serves as a weekly commuter can also be a fun weekend performance ride up and down twisting mountain roads. It can take you offroad and onto the trails, knowing full well that traction control is there to back you up. And it can enable safer riding with GPS navigation front and center where you need it and lighting that predicts your turns to illuminate the curves ahead of you.
That’s pretty darn impressive for an electric scooter, if you ask me!
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Elon Musk is breaking his own rule of not making announcements during Tesla earnings as the CEO appears desperate amid a brand crisis.
Tesla and its CEO, Elon Musk, do not report the most typical earnings.
Earlier in Tesla’s run as a public company, Musk had often been combative with Wall Street analysts. Tesla became one of the first major companies to prioritize taking softball questions from retail investors over more challenging questions from analysts.
In 2021, Musk even said that he would stop attending most Tesla earnings calls, which is highly unusual for the CEO of a major publicly traded company:
“I will no longer be the default during earnings calls. Going forward, I will most likely not be on earnings calls unless there’s something really important that I need to say.”
However, he ended up attending virtually all Tesla earnings calls after making that comment.
Musk has also often said that “Tesla earnings calls are not a place for product announcements” and has shut down the idea of using the platform for revealing new information about the company.
The CEO appears to be moving away from that amid a crisis at Tesla.
Tesla has confirmed that, along with its earnings on Tuesday, the automaker will also hold a “live company update”:
In addition to posting first quarter results, Tesla management will hold a live company update and question and answer webcast that day at 4:30 p.m. Central Time (5:30 p.m. Eastern Time).
This is the first time Tesla has announced something like that.
It comes after Tesla also held an all-hands meeting publicly for the first time just a month ago.
This is happening amid a significant crisis at Tesla. The company experienced its first year of declining sales in 2024, and the decline accelerated in 2025 amid boycotts and protests over Musk’s involvement in politics.
Tesla’s sales are declining, gross margins are shrinking, the Cybertruck is proving to be a commercial flop, and Tesla owners are selling their vehicles in mass to distance themselves from the increasingly more controversial CEO.
Musk held the all-hands meeting publicly amid this crisis and sort of used the event to promote Tesla’s products and more directly, its stock.
Tesla’s stock is down 40% year-to-date, and it’s currently down 4% in pre-market trading a day before the earnings.
What could Tesla announce at the “company update”?
Musk’s public all-hands meeting, along with the attachment of a “company update” to the earnings, both appear to be desperation moves amid a declining stock price and brand crisis at Tesla.
With Tesla delivering ~40,000 fewer vehicles in Q1 2025 versus last year, the automaker is expected to have a tough quarter, which the CEO doesn’t want to pile onto an already long series of bad news.
Last Friday, Reuters released a report claiming a delay in Tesla’s launch of its previously announced, more affordable EV in the US. More importantly, the report appears to make more people understand that Tesla’s upcoming “more affordable EV” is simply a stripped-down Model Y.
Musk may use this “company update” to clarify Tesla’s plans for more affordable EVs, but if they are not ready to go into production right away, it’s unlikely, as the CEO wouldn’t want to fall into the Osborne effect.
It’s more likely that Musk will stick to the same stock-pumping approach he has in the last few years: self-driving and robotics.
The CEO has repeatedly said that Tesla is worth nothing if it doesn’t solve self-driving, and he more recently added that he sees Tesla becoming the most valuable company in the world with its humanoid robots.
I would expect Tesla’s “company update” to focus on those areas.
Musk will likely release more detailed plans about the planned launch of the “unsupervised self-driving” ride-hailing fleet in Austin. We previously reported that Tesla will use the launch of the geo-fenced, teleoperation-assisted fleet as a “win” in self-driving despite being an approach similar to what Waymo has been doing for years and that Musk has been criticizing as unscalable.
It’s a moving of the goalpost compared to Tesla’s previous promises of customer vehicles becoming capable of robotaxi self-driving.
The unveiling of the latest generation of Optimus, Tesla’s humanoid robot, also wouldn’t be surprising.
Tesla has made impressive progress on the robotics side of things with its latest prototypes, but all previous demonstrations of the robots included teleoperation by humans. Until that’s a thing of the past, the Optimus robot has only minimal use cases and value. It will be something to look out for.
Along with these potential product announcements, it is also possible that Musk will announce a proposal for Tesla to invest in xAi, which he would likely present in conjunction with the integration of Grok in Tesla vehicles and robots.
Electrek’s Take
You can sense the desperation here. Tesla is afraid that the earnings will send the stock spiraling further down, and it plans a little pumping session at the same time to compensate.
I am curious to see whether it works or not. Lately, I think the stock more closely relate to whether or not people believe Musk’s claims than anything else and certainly not fundamentals.
With Tesla’s earnings anticipated to decline in the upcoming report and future earnings likely adjusted down, Tesla will trade at record-high price-to-earnings and future earnings ratios.
Every time that happened, Tesla’s stock somewhat quickly readjusted. Still, it will be interesting to see if whatever Musk announces at the “company update” can prevent that from happening, or if Tesla shareholders will start to question whether Musk’s views on Tesla’s self-driving and robotic efforts are accurate.
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Cynics will point at big rebates and claim they mean the vehicle isn’t selling, but that just exposes them for the industry noobs that they are. A rebate is a powerful financial tool that helps dealers overcome obstacles like negative equity, poor credit, and down payment requirements and get you to drive home in the car of your dreams today.
So if you’re dealing with any of the above, but still hope to slide behind the wheel of a new EV before new tariffs kick in, pay attention: these EVs could get you behind the wheel of a new electric ride sooner than you think!
As I was putting this list together, I realized there were plenty of ways for me to present this information. “Biggest EV incentive deals ..?” Not everyone qualifies for every rebate. “Most stackable EV rebates ..?” Too confusing. In the end, I went with national cash back offers and chose to present them in alphabetical order, by make. And, as for which deals are new this month? You’re just gonna have to read the article. Enjoy!
BMW XM
It may look like an angry space beaver on the outside, but BMW advertises itself as the Ultimate Driving Machine, not the Ultimate Style Machine — and by all accounts, the big BMW PHEV is one, if not the best-handling big SUVs out there.
With up to 30 miles of all electric range and a powerful V8 engine, it’s not savaing any trees, but now through April 30th, all versions of the plug-in hybrid offer $12,500 in lease or APR cash. If you’re financing your XM PHEV, BMW Financial is also offering 3.99% financing for up to 60 months, with a 72-month option at 4.49% APR.
Chevy BrightDrop
We recently highlighted a Costco offer that stacks a $25,500 manufacturer rebate with $3,000 in “regular” Costco Member Savings, $2,750 in “LIMITED-TIME” Manufacturer to Member Incentives, plus an additional $250 for Costco Executive members.
That’s more than $30,000 off the MSRP of one of the best, most capable commercial vans on the market – ICE or electric. And that’s before you factor in the 0% interest financing (72 mo.) being advertised on Chevy dealer websites.
Chrysler Pacifica PHEV
When the plug-in hybrid Chrysler Pacifica minivan first went on sale all the way back in 2016, it seemed to imply that the old Chrysler Corporation was going to race ahead of the other “Big Three” legacy US carmakers.
That didn’t happen, but the Pacifica is still the king of cupholders, while the van’s stow n’ go seating, and all the other practical, clever details that add up to remind you Chrysler invented these things. Through April 30th, you can get a $7,500 cash allowance plus $7,500 in Federal income tax credits on Pacific Plug-in Hybrid Select, S, and Pinnacle trim level vans.
Dodge Charger EV
As the auto industry transitions to electric, Dodge is hoping that at least a few muscle car enthusiasts with extra cash, will find their way to a Dodge store and ask for the meanest, loudest, tire-shreddingest thing on the lot.
These days, that’s the new electric Charger – and you still owed money on the Hemi you just totaled, Dodge will help get the deal done on its latest retro ride with a $6,500 rebate on 2025 models or $3,000 plus 0% financing for up to 72 months on 2024s.
Dodge Hornet PHEV
Despite objectively being one of the slowest-selling new cars in North American, the Dodge Hornet eAWD PHEV offers specs that could make a compelling case for die-hard Dodge fans who are curious about EVs, but still worried about finding charging away from home.
If that’s you, the Hornet offers over 30 miles of all-electric range from its 12 kWH battery and a decently quick 0-60 mph — then sweetens the deal even more with $6,500 in lease cash to help bring the payment down.
Kia EV6 GT
CarsDirect is reporting 24-month leases on the positively awesome Kia EV6 GT featuring up to $19,000 in lease cash through May 1st. Other EV6 variants get decent cash back offers, too – be sure to ask your local dealer about the one you’re interested in.
Kia EV9
I’ve been seeing Kia’s excellent, hot-selling tree-row electric SUV all over the ‘burbs, lately — and it’s hardly a wonder why. In addition to being a great car, the Kia EV9 has some of the most aggressive customer incentives in the business, with $11,000 cash back for conventional financing customers and a whopping $16,000 lease cash on 24 month terms through May 1 (36 and 48 month lessors still get a pretty incredible $15,000 cash back).
Get used to seeing these around, in other words. If not in your own driveway, certainly in some of your neighbors’!
Nissan Ariya and LEAF
The inspiration for this article was a hypothetical $9,140 Nissan LEAF deal that I hastily concocted while walking the floor of the 2025 Chicago Auto Show, but the fact remains that even with “just” the $8,500 cash back being advertised through April 30, the $28,140 $19,640 Nissan LEAF is probably the most affordable new car you can buy in the US. If you can score some additional local incentives and dealer discounts, so much the better.
If you want something a bit more modern (and with Tesla Supercharger access), the bigger, more conventional Ariya crossover also packs some solid offers with up to $7,500 in Customer Cash.
Polestar 3
OK, this one’s cheating — the Swedish/Chinese love child of Volvo, Geely, and the championship-winning go-fast gurus at Cyan Racing, Polestar is announcing up to $20,000 in incentives to convince some (but, crucially, not all) customers to trade in their existing EVs on a new Polestar.
The catch? You have to trade in a Tesla to get the $20K. At the rate those cars are depreciating, though, that might be the best offer you’ll get out there!
Toyota bZ4X
It’s not breaking any sales records, but the Toyota bZ4X is a solid five-passenger crossover EV that should meet any suburbanite’s needs with enough of Toyota’s legendary quality baked in to make it a safe bet for a decade-plus of hassle-free driving. Plus, with $10,000 in TFS Lease Subvention cash and plenty of dealer discounts floating around, it might be the best deal in Toyota’s current lineup.
Volkswagen ID.4
One of the most popular legacy EVs, the ID.4 offers Volkswagen build quality and (for 2024) a Chat-GPT enabled interface. To keep ID.4 sales rolling, VW dealers are getting aggressive with discounts, making this fast-charging, 291 mile EPA-rated range, 5-star safety rated EV a value proposition that’s tough to beat.
This month, buy a Volkswagen ID.4 with up to $10,500 in Customer Bonus Cash or lease one with $7,500 in Lease Bonus cash.
Volvo C40, XC60 T8 Recharge
Volvo is offering up to $8,500 ($7,500 in customer cash, $1,000 in loyalty cash) off the price of remaining new C40s — the brand’s sporty, high-riding crossover coupe that happened to be its first dedicated EV offering in the US. If the C40 doesn’t suit you, the same deals are available on the more conventionally styled XC40 Recharge, too.
Buyers looking for one of Volvo’s excellent (IMO) T8 PHEV models can score up to $4,000 in allowances before the real discounting begins — and if, like me, your tastes run more towards Swedish sedans than SUVs, you might want to score yourself a sweet deal on a new S90 while you still can.
Disclaimer: the vehicle models and rebate deals above were sourced from sites like CarsDirect, CarEdge, USNews, and (where mentioned) the OEM websites – and were current 21APR2025. Despite my best efforts to filter these, some deals may not be available in your market, or to every buyer (the standard “with approved credit” fine print should be considered implied). Check with your local dealer(s) for more information.
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