Gogoro 2

Not 200kms in one go. Just a way to do it without having to go ridiculously far out of the way for a charge.

I think soon most of the convenience stores will have a battery bank.

They’re slowly adding charge stations. Currently working on one in Luodong over in Yilan.

I know Gogoro has contracts with Hi Life and Carrefour for charge stations. When I bought mine, they were talking about 7 and Family Mart, but I haven’t seen a charge station in or around one of those stores yet.

My thoughts on EVs…

So first, where does the power to charge batteries come from? If it’s coming from fossil fuel power plants (which is usually the case for EVs in basically all countries today), then the EV is still emitting greenhouse gases by consuming that power. Maybe not as much as a combustion engine, but emissions are emissions.

However, slowly but surely, the grid will switch over to 100% renewables. That’s beyond doubt at this point. The question of how long it will take, and whether it will be too late, is a question for another thread. But it will happen. When it happens, EVs will be completely non-emitting. So EVs win this one. In my view, we should be switching over to all-EV fleets of scooters, cars, trucks, buses and everything else, and we should be doing it yesterday. They are less emitting today, and they are zero emitting tomorrow.

As for the production side, I know very little, and I would be interested in any research or studies that have looked into emissions costs of battery production and recycling as it stands today. But in general, the same logic applies for the future. If you have EV diggers mining for lithium and nickel, EVs trucking oil to solar-powered plastic factories, and solar-powered end manufacturing operations, then you have an emissions-free supply chain for EVs.

So the answer in my mind is, you can debate endlessly about how much the production and use of an EV emits today. But you cannot debate about what’s possible. It is possible for EVs to be completely emissions-free in every sense. That is simply not possible for combustion-powered vehicles of any kind.

So really this is a litmus test for whether people care about climate change or not. Do you want to do your part toward moving humanity toward the what’s possible world? If you’re Taiwanese, buy a Gogoro. If you’re American, put solar panels on your roof and buy a Leaf or a Tesla. And if you don’t care about climate change or don’t think it’s real or it’s inconvenient because you happen to love the sound and feel of combustion engines, then you’ll find plenty of excuses for why EVs are bad or silly or impractical. Humans are great at that!

The vibration from my scooter’s combustion engine provides me with a daily butt massage that wakes me up almost as much as a cup of joe. :sunglasses:

Take some of the ridiculous amount of space given to petrol scooters and turn it into a mixture of charging stations and free parking for electric scooters. Boom! Thats how you clean up the environment.

EVs are not the perfect solution. The simple bicycle and mass transportation are way better, but it’s unlikely that cities like Taichung or Hsinchu will have a complete mass transportation network anytime soon, so they are the next best thing.

2 Likes

You have time to write this up but not respond to my LINE?

feelsbadman

Devil’s advocate here. Wouldn’t those fossil fuel power plants be pumping out electricity (and emissions) regardless of charging EVs anyway? Are they working harder now because there are Gogoro battery stations?

At the same time, on top of the exhaust whilst running, the petrol needs to come from oil refineries. So, as you said, combustion engines definitely pollute more…today.

Yes that’s always worth crunching the numbers on.
I’m sure the calculation has been done somewhere and I’ll make an educated guess that it wouldn’t ramp up power plant demand a large amount unless we are converting the whole fleet of scooters.
Even then you might be reducing energy demand for refining oil. Certainly a scooter is a whole lot more efficient that a car that weight a ton.

What you propose is somewhat related to the idea of a global carbon tax or emissions trading system.
In some ways Taiwan just emits pollution that is being generated on other world citizens behalf. This could be mitigated if the solar panels or batteries manufactured where brought down emissions overall.

Of course what we are more concerned about here are the immediate health effects of air pollution.

Ok, so, here’s some other bad bits about my experience

  • Smoothness of Bluetooth connectivity varies between phones!

I was having issues adjusting some (not all) settings of my G2 with my HTC 10 Evo from day 1. I used my gf’s Samsung S6 and settings were able to be adjusted…once. I went to the shop and the mechanic said that he’s heard that HTC has some trouble with connectivity and currently the best phone (unofficially) in terms of Bluetooth connectivity, are ASUS phones and iPhones coming in at a close second.

  • Headlights not bright enough

If you’re stopped at a small intersection, it’s very easy to point out a Gogoro due to the LED ring light it has. However, the actual headlight for the G2, kinda sucks. I went out on a mountain ride last night and 1/4 of the road up was not lit. I couldn’t see jack. (Luckily, I cycle that road a lot, so I had an idea of where the turns were). Gogoro claims that it’s an angle of the light issue, but when your high beams are weaker than your regular lights, that’s an issue.

That’s interesting about the HTC bluetooth. I have a buddy with a DJi Mavic Pro drone and he had so many problems trying to connect with his HTC (apparently a common problem in the DJi community) that he had to buy an iPad just for his drone.

He probably just wanted an excuse to buy an iPad. Let’s be honest, there’s cheaper options :laughing:

I’ve had connectivity issues with my HTC with my GoPro and my Garmin with connectivity. GoPro is Wifi and Garmin is Bluetooth. I always thought it was just a wireless connection issue.

From my understanding, the only devices that reliably connect to the Mavic Pro are Apple products. He went with the iPad to have a bigger screen while flying remotely.

He already has a tablet, but I think it’s also HTC.

I think there’s a product opportunity for Gogoro+ with Butt Massager (registered trademark Gogoro Corporation LLC Incorporated, Hsinchu, Taiwan, Republic of Charr)

To some extent, energy production from fossil fuel plants can be responsive to grid demand. I think it partly depends on which type of fossil fuel is being using (oil/gas/NG).

Either way, in a 100% fossil fuel energy grid, if you are charging batteries, that battery charge has some level of emissions. That’s the ‘long tailpipe’. If you don’t charge the batteries, you don’t need as much fuel for the plant so your emission are lowered.

Now that would be a product I can get (on my) behind!

In fact, they do:
http://inhabitat.com/gogoro-unveils-new-home-battery-charger-for-electric-scooters-sets-sight-on-your-city/

https://www.gogoro.com/support/gocharger/

The at home charger was only available for a short time and a had a very limited amount and you had to hit all the check marks to even be eligible for one.

As stated, they don’t. It’s not good for business. Good for customers? Yes. A good way to ease the worries of potential customers and spur on adoption of potentially environmentally friendly electric scooters? Yes. But, good for their greedy little bottom line? No. They’re not going to give that up. Kinda makes you wonder how serious they are about getting customers to use electric scooters. Meanwhile, they (and a few others) like to take shots at people who drive gas-powered scooters because these ones don’t want to give up their money to buy a Gogoro. If Gogoro doesn’t want to meet their customers half way, hopefully some other company–or, better yet, consortium of companies–will.

For more irony (hypocrisy?) relating to companies trying to use environmental guilt for profit: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41352259