While many people think of Gogoro as an electric scooter company, it’s perhaps more accurate to call Gogoro a battery-swapping network company that also happens to build fast and tech-savvy electric scooters. That’s because the company is becoming increasingly well-known around the globe for its battery-swapping system, especially now that those batteries are being adopted by leading global light electric vehicle manufacturers.
And while Gogoro has long been the unofficial leader in swappable batteries, the research firm Guidehouse Insights has placed Gogoro at the top of its list of global light electric vehicle battery-swapping firms.
Other companies with lesser-known battery-swapping systems such as Honda, KYMCO, and Immotor could be found lower down the list.
As Guidehouse Insights senior research analyst Ryan Citron explained:
Gogoro has differentiated itself from the competition through its early and compelling vision for light EV battery swapping. It offers an extensive product portfolio across the battery swapping supply chain, a strong track record on quality and performance in its product line, and an unmatched partner network highlighted by several of the world’s largest two-wheeler OEMs.
Gogoro founder and CEO Horace Luke expanded on the company’s feelings about nabbing the No. 1 spot.
We are honored to be recognized by Guidehouse Insights as the global leader in lightweight electric vehicle battery swapping. The Gogoro Network is a sustainable smart city battery swapping ecosystem that provides vehicles makers, riders and cities with a cleaner, faster and superior electric refueling solution. We are at a critical stage in the transformation of urban mobility and the evolution of smart cities. Delivering mass-market access to smarter fuel and more intelligent light urban vehicles that nearly a billion commuters rely on every day is key to our success as a society.
Several thousand battery-swapping stations dot the landscape of Gogoro’s native Taiwan, where the company recently counted its 400,000th monthly subscriber.
Riders can buy Gogoro’s 50+ mph (80+ km/h) seated electric scooters without batteries, then subscribe to the battery-swapping service. When the battery is nearing empty, riders simply pull into any of Gogoro’s battery-swap stations and slide in a new pack.
It’s a tried-and-true system that’s been performed over 2 million times by Gogoro’s riders.
While the company began its operations in Taiwan, Gogoro has now announced several key partnerships that will see its battery-swapping network and/or scooters expand into large markets like India and China, as well as smaller markets like Israel.
The batteries aren’t only powering Gogoro’s scooters. Instead, they are being incorporated into various light electric vehicles built by other manufacturers. That allows such manufacturers to leapfrog forward without having to design their own battery systems. Instead, manufacturers can focus on vehicle design, letting Gogoro’s long-tested battery technology do the work of energy storage and delivery.
Electrek’s Take
It’s not like this comes as any surprise. In the battery-swapping field, Gogoro is the equivalent of back when Michael Phelps was still swimming – everyone else is simply playing for silver.
I don’t want to call myself a Gogoro fanboy, but…. I probably am. I’ve always felt that the company’s system is just so beautifully engineered. The stations are everywhere, the swapping is simple and intuitive, the network works as backup power for the local public grid in natural disasters, and the batteries themselves even look pretty darn cool.
There are other nice-looking systems out there – KYMCO’s IONEX stations look pretty snazzy and they have some nice industrial design – but Gogoro’s massive size and years of success should be the benchmark by which such battery swapping systems are judged.
This is how it’s done.
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