http://www.accessmagazine.org/fall-2010/electric-two-wheelers-china-promise-progress-potential/
“Electric two-wheelers have transformed the way people move in most Chinese cities. In just ten years, growth in electric two-wheelers—a category that includes vehicles ranging from electric bicycles to electric motorcycles—has substantially increased the total number of vehicles in China. Electric bike sales began modestly in the 1990s and started to take off in 2004, when 40,000 were sold. Since then, over 100 million have been sold and now more than 20 million are sold each year. Electric two wheelers, in short, represent the first mass-produced and mass-adopted alternative-fuel vehicles in the history of motorization.”
Interesting documentary on solar team from NTU (link below) that says
"The solar car experience has also carried over into the work of another team member, Mort Lin (林松慶), who now heads the powertrain department at Taiwan-based “smart” scooter maker Gogoro Inc. Lin said Cheng taught him how to “make things from scratch” using minimal resources and labor. That training became a valuable asset when he began building laboratories and production lines for Gogoro, a start-up, Lin said, adding that building a solar car also prepared him to design an energy-efficient vehicle."
Yes. If you check the Far Eastone info, you can add it to the subsidies. It’s not that much more, but the government subsidies will solely depend on where you live!
So I went last night to the Ba De store by Rao He Street night market. The place was bumpin’ at 8PM. Lots of customers coming in to ask and people getting test drives. (All you need to do is hand over your scooter license and sign a release) The sales people were all very on point and gf and I didn’t wander for too long before we were approached.
My cousin has an old 50cc 2 stroke scooter that she’s gotta get rid of so I got an extra 4000NT on top of the subsidies the other government entities will give me. Which totals out my subsidies to 17,000NT. Check below for the run down. Taipei seems to get the least amount. I assume it has to do something with the lower population of scooter riders on the road compared to Taichung or Kaohsiung.
The test ride was just as I expected. Before getting on, the employee will ask you to put on your helmet and he’ll give you the run down of the basic features. You got a total of 10 minutes to test drive and luckily, Civic Blvd is right there to let me cruise and crank up the speed.
There’s a very distinct difference between the three modes. Economy there’s less juice out of the gates and as you go up the modes the time it takes you to get from 0-60 decreases. Lots of fun and the turn signals automatically turning off after you’ve turned is an awesome feature.
If you’re in the right city, you can pay next to nothing for one of these. What I heard from the sales girl was that for the first gen, it depended on what city, country and district. For the second gen, it just came down to city.
Government does offer subsidies to trade in your 2 stroke, but it’s really not that much compared to a Gogoro. It’ll be a long ways until Gogoro or even electric scooters is the norm in Taiwan.
I guess as a foreigner I’ll be sticking to my polluting gas scooter for a while. I’d love to get in on those pretty sweet subsidies but it’s not for us.
Either that or ask some little old lady that I know who doesn’t drive if she will buy it in her name.
But with these subsidies gogoro is coming out cheaper than a lot of gas scooters, along with this 500ntd/mth it’s got to be competitive now with gas scooters.
In the same class, they are definitely coming out much cheaper than gas scooters, but it’s an unknown and no one knows if problems will arise. Nonetheless, still awesome for the environment.
The 500NTD/month really really depends on your monthly mileage. I spend about 400-450/month on gas for my scooter. However, now that I “don’t have to pay” for extra mileage, I know I’ll be taking unnecessary trips to places I don’t need to go. However, some people do nothing but commute to and from work everyday, so maybe the 299NTD/month which I think is 50-70km is more worth it for them.
299NT/month gets you around 50km a month and every KM after that is something around 2NT. So it’s not too much if you go over a few kms, but can add up.
So far, Gogoro is doing a lot of things right. They aren’t perfect, but who is? Tbh, without the government incentive, I bet their would be half the amount of units zooming around the island. Getting the government to back up consumers with the incentives is great and a step in the right direction.
Taipei government will be banning 2 stroke scooters in the Xinyi shopping district in the near future. We may not see the scooters we see on the roads being replaced by electric scooters in our lifetime, but I think (at least) Taipei government is heading in the right direction.
We definitely will see all electric within our lifetime and very likely within 20 years , the younger generation won’t accept the pollution from petrol powered vehicles when there is another better optjon. I expect China and EU to ban all combustion vehicles within 20 years! Even if they didn’t completely ban the steadily increasing efficiency and pollution reduction mandates will result in more than 95% market share to electric .
I was in Shanghai for a few days last week. It was really nice to see the electrically-powered contraptions (I’m not sure if they deserve the term ‘scooters’) being used to shuttle stuff and people around. Completely silent and probably very efficient, even though they appear to be made from car batteries and bent steel tube. Reminded me of miniature milk floats. Remember them?
hmmm. That’s all very well, but electric cars are still cars, and they come with their own unique issues. Pollution and resource scarcity, for example. I predict a few more civil wars in Africa.