Gogoro smart electric scooters getting several Apple features
Gogoro, a leading player in the battery-swapping electric scooter market is taking a page out of Apple’s book. Or more accurately, it’s working with the consumer electronics giant to incorporate key Apple features directly into its scooters.
The company announced today that it would start leveraging its scooters’ NFC keyless unlocking along with Apple Wallet to let users activate and lock their scooters directly from their iPhone or Apple Watch.
Gogoro Smartscooter riders will now be able to add a scooter key to Apple Wallet on their iPhone and Apple Watch. Riders can then simply hold their device near the Smartscooter’s NFC-enabled reader to unlock and start the scooter. The feature will be available on Gogoro’s new scooters, but will also be backwards compatible with over 300,000 electric scooters already on the road.
Owners will also be able to seamlessly share their digital with friends or family members using iOS by sending it via messaging applications like Apple’s Messages app, WeChat, or others. Riders will be able to tell a friend “Sure, borrow my scooter. Here’s where it’s parked…”, then text them the key. Owners maintain control over that digital key and can cancel shared access at any time.
It’s a feature that is grounded in utility, as Gogoro founder and CEO Horace Luke explained:
“Innovation is a key component of Gogoro’s strategy, and we believe that revolutionary technology can have a positive impact on culture. Scooter Key in Apple Wallet delivers enhanced convenience to our new and existing customers and we are excited to roll out to our vehicles starting today. This feature will not only be available with our latest lineup of Smartscooters, but more than 300,000 of our existing Smartscooter customers will also be able to enjoy Scooter Key in Apple Wallet.”
Gogoro is also working with Apple to integrate another key feature of location tracking. Gogoro scooters will soon come with Apple Find My integration built directly into the scooter. That means that SmartScooter owners will be able to locate their scooters directly from their phones as well as mark them lost if they were to go… missing.
It’s also a handy feature if you forget where you parked, something my wife and I have encountered exactly two frustrating times and look forward to never needing to search every corner and level of a parking garage again.
Gogoro’s integration with Find My will first be available on specific new Smartscooters including the new Gogoro CrossOver S, with plans to bring it to the entire Gogoro portfolio in the future.
I have a few electric bicycles that use Apple Find My integration, and it’s great to have that extra security of always knowing where my bike is. With electric scooters costing several times as much as many electric bikes, having an additional built-in tracker is a great feature to have.
The new Apple features marks yet another hardware improvement to Gogoro’s lineup. Lately we’ve seen the company roll out new models as well as make major announcements regarding international expansion of its scooters and battery-swapping platform.
Gogoro’s Smartscooters often snag the limelight, yet it is the company’s battery-swapping design that is key to its success.
The open platform means that many other manufacturers can build electric scooters that rely on Gogoro’s swappable battery standard, giving riders many options for vehicles that all rely on the same tried-and-true battery swapping infrastructure.
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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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