Gogoro electric scooter

Life Cars & Motorcycles
61

Understand it is a range problem, and understand the majority of the local demographic would have trouble charging at home. But then the local demographic is also very cost conscious, queuing at the gas station for a fill when the price of gas is NT$0.1 cheaper or going up the next day.

I suspect unless there is a guaranteed service level, parting money for a “charged battery” maybe a bit arbitrary for many, especially when it could take you 60~90km depending on the state of the battery you receive. At least with gas, you pay for a gallon and receive a gallon and it will take you within reason the same distance last week as it does this week.

With your own battery & charging you put in what you take out, as the battery degrades you choose when it is beneficial to you to replace.

Of course it is not a problem if the cost per km is significantly lower than the 2 stroke 50cc they use now, though if the user changes to electric because of this saving, and then receives variable results battery to battery… I can foresee bandana clad protestors, outside complaining until they get a 30% discount for that last NG battery.

62

This would be easily resolved by metering the charge that goes in and pricing accordingly - which, regardless of the state of the battery, will be roughly 110%-130% of what you can get out. This would be a good way to get max life from their batteries: consumers could choose to pay a bit less to “hire” an older, cheaper battery.

63

This would be easily resolved by metering the charge that goes in and pricing accordingly - which, regardless of the state of the battery, will be roughly 110%-130% of what you can get out. This would be a good way to get max life from their batteries: consumers could choose to pay a bit less to “hire” an older, cheaper battery.[/quote]

Agree it can be resolved, and metering of some sorts would work. I’m not sure of the physics of older batteries, though shouldn’t it be on what comes out? which complicates the system as you need to close the loop. If you pay for what went in, you would need to know what the balance of charge was originally.

64

[quote=“nivek”]Understand it is a range problem, and understand the majority of the local demographic would have trouble charging at home. But then the local demographic is also very cost conscious, queuing at the gas station for a fill when the price of gas is NT$0.1 cheaper or going up the next day.

I suspect unless there is a guaranteed service level, parting money for a “charged battery” maybe a bit arbitrary for many, especially when it could take you 60~90km depending on the state of the battery you receive. At least with gas, you pay for a gallon and receive a gallon and it will take you within reason the same distance last week as it does this week.

With your own battery & charging you put in what you take out, as the battery degrades you choose when it is beneficial to you to replace.

Of course it is not a problem if the cost per km is significantly lower than the 2 stroke 50cc they use now, though if the user changes to electric because of this saving, and then receives variable results battery to battery… I can foresee bandana clad protestors, outside complaining until they get a 30% discount for that last NG battery.[/quote]

Two strokes have been obsoleted about 10 years ago in Taiwan!
I think the swappable batteries are a go, especially if the company monitors them correctly. You could pay a flat fee per month so the customer doesn’t feel any difference to their pocket.
Best would be integrated batteries like Silas mentioned, but the local accommodation seems to make that a very niche option.
In the end Gogoro versus u-bike and subway, it’s going to be a challenge in Taipei, their natural market. The rest of the country is basically in the stone are when it comes to transportation and the incomes to pay for it. Kaoshiung people can barely afford the subway. Car drivers could swap to electric eventually (see a lot of hybrids now but very
few pure electric, infrastructure is not there yet).
mentioning hybrids, I guess a hybrid scooter would be quite expensive?

My favorite tech for a scooter would be a fuel cell and Hydrogen, it would probably cost the same as a small car!

65

Not really - lithium cells mustn’t be overcharged, so what goes in is what comes out, minus charge-discharge inefficiency, which varies depending on how fast you haul the energy out. Anyway, the latter is the user’s problem; he should be paying for whatever the supplier puts into the battery, and if he chooses to thrash the scooter, that’s his lookout. Basically, an older battery loses capacity, not efficiency (or at least not much) and that’s observable during the charge cycle.

66

Not really - lithium cells mustn’t be overcharged, so what goes in is what comes out, minus charge-discharge inefficiency, which varies depending on how fast you haul the energy out. Anyway, the latter is the user’s problem; he should be paying for whatever the supplier puts into the battery, and if he chooses to thrash the scooter, that’s his lookout. Basically, an older battery loses capacity, not efficiency (or at least not much) and that’s observable during the charge cycle.[/quote]

Lithium batteries in EVs will be happiest and provide a much longer life of service if kept between 20% and 80% state of charge at all times, best governed by software which limits this on either end (ala Tesla). Thrash your batteries by taking them from 0-100%, and turn an expensive EV battery from an ~8 year lifespan to a 3 year. To keep them portable, there are truly significant performance/capacity/lifespan trade-offs, as previously discussed.

67

Really? So Taiwanese can’t carry anything heavier than a handbag? Like for example a 5 liter water bottle? Or a bag full of shopping?

The Taiwanese might not be very good at doing anything, but you’d be surprised of the lengths they’d go to just to save a dime.[/quote]

Try a 5 liter water bottle, a full shopping bag, and 2 batteries at one time. Carrying batteries around is a damn inconvenience and almost for sure be considered too much of a hassle for the typical Taiwanese.

68

Really? So Taiwanese can’t carry anything heavier than a handbag? Like for example a 5 liter water bottle? Or a bag full of shopping?

The Taiwanese might not be very good at doing anything, but you’d be surprised of the lengths they’d go to just to save a dime.[/quote]

Try a 5 liter water bottle, a full shopping bag, and 2 batteries at one time. Carrying batteries around is a damn inconvenience and almost for sure be considered too much of a hassle for the typical Taiwanese.[/quote]

If I had one of these (or more likely an electric bicycle) the carrying of batteries would happen at work, cos that way my employer would be paying for my fuel.

In those circumstances, I reckon I could carry one while whistling and pretending I had an unusually heavy laptop.

69

Regardless what the employer policy is or will become, the actual electricity costs would be very minimal compared to the cost of fuel OR a battery swap at a Gogoro kiosk. Expect on the order of 1/4th the cost of fuel or so. Whether employers embrace this, or how many, and in what time frame it may happen on some scale, as well as whether it can be incentivized (as this is an issue of national significance - Taiwan needs a smarter energy policy, or do we continue to lay ourselves open to the dangers of importing over 90% of our energy, when electricity can become renewable?) are all related issues. Reimbursement to the employer for recharging would be arranged. The practice may be a bit under the radar and random at first before the need to officially structure it develops. Some will resist, but they’re not in a position to consider and address the larger picture which will eventually have to be regulated and enforced.

70

If any part of your plan is to have consumers carrying around batteries or employers at all on board with employees charging batteries in the office then you do not know your consumer at all.

You also conveniently inflate (and massively) inflate the savings of electric vs gas. We will probably need to start another thread for why gas prices will remain low for the medium term future (HUGE supply in the 80ish/barrel range in the US/CA) but electricity is only 1/2 the price equivalent gasoline. energy.gov/articles/egallon-what … -important

Facts are important if you actually want to talk bigger picture. And the bigger bigger picture is that all you have done is replace dirty technology with slightly less dirty technology. Taiwan gets a significant amount of its electricity from coal. And coal is imported…

71

I agree with this. If people were up for that, they’d be doing it right now, because that’s what the market offers.

[quote]You also conveniently inflate (and massively) inflate the savings of electric vs gas. We will probably need to start another thread for why gas prices will remain low for the medium term future (HUGE supply in the 80ish/barrel range in the US/CA) but electricity is only 1/2 the price equivalent gasoline. energy.gov/articles/egallon-what … -important

Facts are important if you actually want to talk bigger picture. And the bigger bigger picture is that all you have done is replace dirty technology with slightly less dirty technology. Taiwan gets a significant amount of its electricity from coal. And coal is imported…[/quote]

I agree with this up to a point. The price comparison on the website is in the right ballpark, but the two fuels are not directly comparable. The cost of operating a BEV is mostly the depreciation cost of the battery. Only 20-30% is the cost of the energy, especially when you’re talking about a scooter in stop-start traffic. Simplistically, you can look at it this way: gasoline costs NT$50/liter, or NT$1.5/MJ(th). Electricity is ~$4/kWh, or NT1.1/MJ. An electric scooter is about 80% efficient at converting your battery charge into motive power, whereas a scooter ICE is about 20% efficient in city traffic. Therefore the net energy costs are $7.5/MJ(mech) for gasoline and $1.5/MJ(mech) for electric.

However, a 1kWh LiFePO4 scooter battery only has a lifetime of ~1500 cycles (I’ve no idea what the Gogoro uses, but LiFePO4 is a popular battery chemistry for scooters). That’s a total energy cycle of ~4000MJ, so if the battery costs NT20000 (which it will) then your storage cost is NT$5/MJ, which brings you right back up to NT$6.5NT again. And we’ve ignored recycling cost - it’s a safe bet that those batteries would end up in a landfill.

Still, it doesn’t take much imagination to realise that a street full of electric vehicles will be a LOT quieter, and less stinky, than the gasoline-powered equivalent. You could sit on the sidewalk and drink your coffee without feeling your cortisol levels creeping up into the red zone. Pollution from power stations can at least be scrubbed. And BEVs might be a necessary stage that we have to go through so that people can grok electric vehicles.

Where it gets a little unfair is that oil proponents pretend that gasoline scooters don’t depreciate at all, or don’t cost anything. The embodied energy in an electric scooter (minus the battery) is less than that in the gasoline version. It will last longer and it can be recycled in much the same way. But the battery is a problem. It’s one reason why I’ve rather lost interest in BEVs and really wish governments would go straight to wired PRT networks. Sadly, your average politican would discount that out of hand.

72

I’m impressed, Abacus. Do you honestly think I could be in this position for so many years without a developed understanding of the sources of electricity to the local grid mix? Perhaps I shouldn’t be too surprised, but it’s obvious and central to the matter of EVs, something to be addressed at the very start. We can take a step back to review.

And again note, we’re discussing a type of electric scooter which is quite distinct from what the market has provided to date, from ~2008 until now, with greater range/performance benefits per battery swap effort. The thread title states this, but continuing to assert that battery habits based upon experience with a 1st gen e-moving type scooter would also apply to next-gen Gogoro type smartscooters is problematic. A premature assessment in any event.

I’ll address your points, despite the condescension, later.

73

I may be wrong, but I don’t think he was suggesting this. I believe his point was that 1st-gen (“batteries included”) scooters are unlikely to ever work because people can’t be bothered to lug batteries around. The anemic uptake of existing products suggests this is true.

74

I may be wrong, but I don’t think he was suggesting this. I believe his point was that 1st-gen (“batteries included”) scooters are unlikely to ever work because people can’t be bothered to lug batteries around. The anemic uptake of existing products suggests this is true.[/quote]
Someone left his first generation e-scooter at the front of our building, sitting there for months without being used … power problem?

75

Not in Taiwan, last time I filled up (my scooter takes 92) it cost 22NT$/liter.

76

Maybe the computer servers to run the whole system need more power than the recharging?

77

ah, you’re right … was thinking different currency :slight_smile: I’m sure the last time I filled up it was about 37, but that was a couple of months ago.

Anyway, point is, wired EV systems destroy fossil fuels hands-down, but the cost of a battery makes a big hole in the economic argument for BEVs. I wonder if this is why oil producers have made an effort to keep prices low lately? Can’t have those EVs taking too much market share, can we? Gotta keep consumers using The Product.

78

Not in Taiwan, last time I filled up (my scooter takes 92) it cost 22NT$/liter.[/quote]
Gosh!
Do all consumers make rational decisions calculating everything down to the penny?
Then why do people buy I-phones?

There is a market for E-bikes, and those people do not make their purchasing depressions on the same rational grounds that keep you from buying one.
There is a class of people who do not make a penny by penny decision when buying a vehicle.
Like that old lady I saw during a Galaxy Note 3 training session.
She kept saying “RV RV where where put the RV?”
You mean USB!
Ah so.
When rolling out a new product, it’s not a good Idea to target the penny-pinchers.
That’s one of the things Tesla got right.

79

Not in Taiwan, last time I filled up (my scooter takes 92) it cost 22NT$/liter.[/quote]
Gosh!
Do all consumers make rational decisions calculating everything down to the penny?
Then why do people buy I-phones?

There is a market for E-bikes, and those people do not make their purchasing depressions on the same rational grounds that keep you from buying one.
There is a class of people who do not make a penny by penny decision when buying a vehicle.
Like that old lady I saw during a Galaxy Note 3 training session.
She kept saying “RV RV where where put the RV?”
You mean USB!
Ah so.
When rolling out a new product, it’s not a good Idea to target the penny-pinchers.
That’s one of the things Tesla got right.[/quote]
No, obviously people in Taiwan don’t, else they wouldn’t shop at convenience stores where almost everything is at least 30% more expensive than at normal supermarkets. It’s about convenience, if there is no infrastructure people won’t buy it. And why people buy iPhones? Because they think they belong to a supreme group, or they’re stupid and don’t really care about money spending.

80

Bingo.

You’re quite correct that the economic decision is a bit iffy. It’s a pity about that, but most likely it’ll all be different in 5 years time.

In the meantime, it would be nice if electric scooter manufacturers could shift some product so we can get the other benefits: ie., less noise and less pollution. And they can do that by appealing to consumer irrationality.