CES 2015: Gogoro Smart Electric Scooter

The limits of electric vehicles are dictated by their batteries. While technological advances are aimed at creating batteries which can store more power more rapidly, Gogoro want to circumvent the whole obstacle by introducing a battery swapping program. Sure, the idea is not new, but Gogoro’s idea has good chances to work in the long run.

After four years operating in stealth, Taiwanese Gogoro is revealing an electric scooter designed for commuters along with a ridiculously ambitious plan to power it. You don’t plug the scooter in, like you would essentially any other electric vehicle in the world instead, Gogoro has its sights set on user-swappable batteries and a vast network of battery swapping stations that could cover some of the most densely populated cities in the world.
Horace Luke CEO of Gogoro, has spent much of his career building cutting edge consumer gadgets at Microsoft’s Xbox division and smartphone-maker HTC. But he got bored. Now he’s raised almost $150 million to try something a bit more ambitious. Short stature and head shaved clean, Luke has been working for the past three years on an electric scooter designed for densely packed megacities–basically, a city with 10 million or more people.

His Taipei-based company, Gogoro, is getting ready to bring its sleek-looking vehicle to market in 2015. The cloud-connected scooter comes packed with 30 sensors that report if, say, a break light goes out. The sensors also collects and analyzes how each rider’s behavior to make sure energy use on the vehicle is optimized. But the big deal about Gogoro isn't necessarily the scooter itself—though it is very nice looking.

The thing that’s most interesting about the company is its swappable battery network it plans on building out in emerging and existing mega cities. The lithium-ion batteries have a more than 60 mile range—similar to what gas scooter are capable of. When the rider is ready to swap the two batteries in the scooter, she is routed the nearest charging station through the Gogoro app where the charging station pops out two fresh batteries that are tailored to her driving style–if the rider is prone to going fast, they’ll probably need a stronger, fresher battery.

 

The scooter and the battery network are two sides of the same coin, but the scooter seems like something of a stepping stone  a first move to begin laying the foundation for its battery swapping network, which the company clearly hopes will power many a gadget  vehicular or otherwise  moving forward. The network is composed of an electric battery-powered scooter and a battery network that places recharging stations around cities.

Those who buy a smart scooter will also have a subscription to the battery service, which allows for unlimited battery swapping within a given city. The 9 kg batteries, stored in a compartment under the seat, can be swapped and replaced within seconds. Scooter owners will also be able to use an accompanying app, allowing data collected by the scooter's sensors to be tracked (including battery levels, parking location and energy use).

The app also lets you customize parts of the scooter, like the color of the dashboard lights. The lithium-ion batteries were developed in partnership with Panasonic using the Japanese company’s cylindrical 18650-size batteries–the same used inside Tesla’s Model S. The batteries have 25 sensors in them and report back to the cloud every 10 minutes about their status. And the battery talks to the vehicle through near field communication (NFC) technology and to your phone through Bluetooth.

All the Gogoro stations will be synced up to determine which station has enough batteries charged to feed demand at particular locations. It’ll learn the behavior of regular users and be able to manage peak energy demands to better fit in with a city’s electricity demand. Batteries will spend their time charging in hours when energy isn’t in such high demand. Blackouts are a frequent issue in some big cities as energy demands spike more and more at certain times with rapid population growth. This is an attempt to offset those peaks.

 

“As population grows in mega cities, electricity demand is only going to increase at that peak,” said Luke. “There’s the potential of charging surplus energy at night and have them ready for the day. … Imagine a world where your vehicle is so connected to the grid that it knows who, when and how you change batteries. You can design a grid that follows that pattern dynamically throughout the day and adjust energy levels to the amount of vehicles on the road.”

The swappable battery idea may bring to some people’s minds the disastrous cleantech failure that was Israel-based electric vehicle startup Better Place, which received nearly a billion in investment. But instead of the big hulking battery swaps that Better Place had to do with its four-wheel cars with the use of robots, you simply swap out two batteries into the Gogoro scooter using your own two hands. This makes installing the charging stations cheaper.

To deploy the Gogoro stations, the company said it’ll cost $10,000–much lower cost than Better Place’s $500,000 charging stations.
 

Of course, the entire model behind Gogoro could fall apart if it never manages to get cities on board to invest and install this infrastructure. Gogoro thinks it’ll need one station per mile in cities to build the infrastructure up enough for the Gogoro system to work. Gogoro is already in talks with several big cities around building this battery infrastructure–including at least one US city. Even though the target is young people in booming urban areas of the developing world, Gogoro plans to have some presence in Europe and the US.

Gogoro said we should be seeing rollout plans around building out this charging infrastructure later this year. The Gogoro Smartscooter comes with a monocoque chassis, aluminium wheels with center hub locking, a 8.6 hp motor with integrated planetary gears and carbon fiber belt transmission and ride-by-wire. The scoot can produce 25 Nm (18.4 lb-ft) of torque and will do 0-50 km/h (0-31 mph) in 4.2 seconds. Riding with a heavy hand can hurl you at 95 km/h (60 mph), but the recommended speed for decent range is 40 km/h (25 mph).

Other notable features are the color customization possibilities for the dashboard, keyless ride, remote locking and unlocking, Android and iOS compatibility, auto headlights and customizable breathing effect plus a tone more. Scooters seemed like the perfect place to move things forward—the industry hasn't moved very far in the past 20 years. There are roughly 200 million scooters worldwide. Many people in the emerging mega cities are coming into the middle class and desire a means to get around, but the transportation infrastructure isn't keeping pace with city growth. The long-term vision behind Gogoro is all around the battery.

Gogoro hopes others will build products on top of the modular battery technology. They’re already talking about how the batteries a few years down the road could be used to serve as backup in server farms and commercial buildings. “This company is not just about shipping vehicles but about starting a new industry and getting everybody rallied around smart energy,” exclaimed Luke. “We call it the smart scooter, not just the electric scooter. It’s connected, receiving, learning.”