It seems you might be able to snag one for around 105k if you get all the grants. One thing I’d wonder though is can you get a subsidy if your hukou is not in Taipei city. Most younger people have their hukou in New Taipei City or somewhere else. The problem is can they get enough people to join the scheme. They’ll need 10,000s to make it profitable. Each station costs 100,000s to millions of NTD just to set up. They claim they’ll have 70 stations this year. Okay that’s not a lot of money in big scheme of things, maybe 2+ million USD. So maybe that’s not prohibitive. But still need to get those numbers up! Maybe they can run group schemes with companies, that might help.
If your monthly MRT and Taxi expenses are around 3000 to 4000 NT$, the GoGoro bike will run even after about 5 years.
53940 NT$ for the battery service in 5 years.
128000 NT$ for the scooter without any additional repairs.
Total 181940 NT$ for 5 years.
3032.333333333 NT$ operating costs per month not included insurance, tax and repairs.
Since many parents will buy this for their kids, the limited range might be a strong selling point here in Taiwan.
I don’t know many parents that would shell out 105k+ for their ‘kids’ scooters. But maybe you do. The economics of it aren’t too bad, but I’d still prefer to MRT around than ride a scooter for long distances. And real ‘kids’ aren’t allowed ride scooters. Gogoro is a great idea, but it’s also competing against some of the best and most comprehensive and economic public transport systems in the world in Taipei (municipal trains/buses and bus lanes/MRT/ubikes). It would be even more useful in Taichung or Kaoshiung too, but folks would just laugh at a price tag like that in those cities. It would be very handy in Hsinchu though, and some folks have plenty of cash.
People may need even more incentive to move to an electric scooter, convenience is the key. Now it’s simply too convenient to use a regular gasoline scooter. If by owning an electric scooter you got priority parking in some areas, or ban gasoline scooters in certain areas, or introduce paid scooter parking through the whole city but don’t charge electric scooters. Need more reasons than simple cost switch people over. That’s why this will live or die by government policy, that’s going to be tricky.
bulk orders, group schemes as you say, could be a good boost to get them going. pizza hut, McD delivery scooters. company can monitor location, usage, etc of thousands of scooters, CSR (look how green we are), etc
That’s what I said on page one. I was pretty close on the price.
I completely agree with those who say that few will buy at this price unless the gov’t makes life hard on gas bikes and easier on electric ones.
I also agree that the unlimited use of batteries might attract some groups who are on their bikes for over two hours a day.
If they could get the price down to NT$99,999, I bet sales would double.
That’s what I said on page one. I was pretty close on the price.
I completely agree with those who say that few will buy at this price unless the gov’t makes life hard on gas bikes and easier on electric ones.
I also agree that the unlimited use of batteries might attract some groups who are on their bikes for over two hours a day.
If they could get the price down to NT$99,999, I bet sales would double.[/quote]
Let’s assume that this company did their homework and basically know what to expect at 128000 NT$ sales price.
Maybe their production will be at full capacity already.
Year two and three, they’ll expand their production capacity and lower the price.
What exactly do we know?
Now and then, I’ll take those discarded ATM receipts to see how much money other people have.
Most of those accounts are empty, down to 1000 NT$.
What do I know from that?
People who only have 1000 NT$ in their accounts, throw their receipts into the trash.
I bet, they did the research and figured the highest possible price while filling up the production capacity.
I was pretty surprised to see they are offering unlimited charging for 899nt a month.
I know I can spend about 400-500nt on gas in one day trip top to bottom of Taiwan on my gas saver 125cc.
What could make this really take off and attractive to adventurous ex-pats as myself would be to have charging
stations set up in all major cities. Then when going top to bottom I could stop off along the way and swap batteries.
This option would be the absolute cheapest form of transportation.
Ex: going to Taichung or south from Taipei once a week every week in a month for 899nt a month would beat everything
in price comparison, except maybe a nissan leaf.
The last issue is if in a perfect world they had charge swap stations damn near everywhere at 7/11s in BFE
here comes the last issue,… is price guarantee. Will 2016 be 899nt a month for unlimited swaps or 1200nt a month
after gogoro adds more stations? what about 2020? 2000nt a month? Is it possible this monthly fee will go up?
Is there anyway to lock in your monthly subscription price for the next say 5, 10 years? 2000nt a month in the year 2020
wouldn’t be so attractive unless gas was 100nt a liter by then.
But we live in the real world and if there is an all out ban on gas scooters to come then for now gogorosa best option.
until competitive companies go against each other should the market increase amazingly fast due to a new gas scooter ban law coming into effect.
[quote=“finley”]Oh crap. They’re screwed.
Absolutely nobody is going to blow six months’ salary on a scooter, however good it is. NT$899 is 20-odd liters of petrol, or 400km. Most people just don’t spend that much on fuel. The nail in the coffin is that that’s about the same price as a US-made, batteries-included machine.
RIP Gogoro. Ah well: worth keeping one’s ear to the ground. There’ll be a fire sale of all their IP in a few months, and I bet some of it is worth buying.[/quote]
Your math is off. 899NT is almost 30-40 liters of petrol. My cost/km is more in the 1km = 1 NT (or cheaper).
This pricing is way off if they expect to sell enough to fund a useable grid of charging stations. Yes, there are some that are really rich and can buy something that is considerably more expensive than a petrol scooter (used and new market). That works for Tesla because they can sell low volume for a high price. The success of Gogoro is dependent on a high volume of users to create a big grid of charging stations. They need to be able to appeal to anyone. 100+K for a scooter only appeals to a small number of scooter owners.
Is it? I must admit I don’t take much notice of the price when filling up. Anyway, my point was that gasoline is cheaper than their refill scheme for most people - so they’re screwed.
I agree. I like electric scooters on principle, but I wouldn’t buy a Gogoro at that price because I’d feel I was paying over the odds - although I do appreciate that, somehow, they’ve got to fund their charging-station network. I know pretty accurately what goes into an electric scooter and how much it costs, and they’re taking the piss. They should have got some other corporation to fund the charging stations and take all/most of the profits therefrom, instead of attempting to do it all themselves. This will kill them.
[quote=“finley”]
I do appreciate that, somehow, they’ve got to fund their charging-station network. I know pretty accurately what goes into an electric scooter and how much it costs, and they’re taking the piss. They should have got some other corporation to fund the charging stations and take all/most of the profits therefrom, instead of attempting to do it all themselves. This will kill them.[/quote]
I think they should provide a battery to e-bicycle interface so that electric bicycles could use their system.
I personally would be interested using their battery swapping scheme in connection with my E-bike.
There would be a huge market for the battery scheme. I went to their test-drive only to figure out that I’ll need to have a scooter license for that. I don’t want to deal with drivers license, tax, and insurance so I can save 5 minutes on my commutes. I am pretty sure that this could be a success.
Is it? I must admit I don’t take much notice of the price when filling up. Anyway, my point was that gasoline is cheaper than their refill scheme for most people - so they’re screwed.
I agree. I like electric scooters on principle, but I wouldn’t buy a Gogoro at that price because I’d feel I was paying over the odds - although I do appreciate that, somehow, they’ve got to fund their charging-station network. I know pretty accurately what goes into an electric scooter and how much it costs, and they’re taking the piss. They should have got some other corporation to fund the charging stations and take all/most of the profits therefrom, instead of attempting to do it all themselves. This will kill them.[/quote]
The monthly cost is one thing but for the charging network to be successful (enough users = charging stations seemingly everywhere) they need to be able to appeal to people with good used scooters (30K value) and to buyers of new scooters (60-70K value). The reported cost is 2-4x that so I’m not sure who they will appeal to other than a smaller select group of upper middle class or the rich in Taiwan. The result is a less dense charging network and that sucks for everyone.
I was never going to be able to buy one anyway since I regularly go for 200+ km rides into the mountains and sometimes have a passenger. That’s the downside of an escooter. Less functionality. Overall this is an excellent product but I don’t see it fitting the needs of many potential users especially at these prices.
I had considered a e-moving scooter a while ago. Yes you need to lug a heavy battery around but I have lifts at home and work so would have been do-able. But in the end range anxiety and cost of replacing the battery every 2-3 years put me off
With the gogoro 899 monthly rental I think that is reasonable for “unlimited” swaps but their T&Cs state that you can’t average more than 1600km per month or otherwise they class that as commercial use and they cancel your agreement. I think that is the killer. Wonder if they will do contracts with e.g. post office, couriers, food delivery, traffic wardens etc. to increase the user base and visibility of their product and in turn have more gogoro stations and build up the infrastructure. Then that will attract more consumers in the long term.
Why would someone buy em? Is there any benefit over a regular scooter?
Ain’t cheaper, ain’t faster, small thin wheels, a gruesome suspension…
What am i missing? Or is it only a thing cuz they rented that nice xinyi showroom?
Gogoro spotted in the wild …
[quote=“headhonchoII”]I don’t know many parents that would shell out 105k+ for their ‘kids’ scooters. But maybe you do. The economics of it aren’t too bad, but I’d still prefer to MRT around than ride a scooter for long distances. And real ‘kids’ aren’t allowed ride scooters. Gogoro is a great idea, but it’s also competing against some of the best and most comprehensive and economic public transport systems in the world in Taipei (municipal trains/buses and bus lanes/MRT/ubikes). It would be even more useful in Taichung or Kaoshiung (Gaoxiong) too, but folks would just laugh at a price tag like that in those cities. It would be very handy in Hsinchu though, and some folks have plenty of cash.
People may need even more incentive to move to an electric scooter, convenience is the key. Now it’s simply too convenient to use a regular gasoline scooter. If by owning an electric scooter you got priority parking in some areas, or ban gasoline scooters in certain areas, or introduce paid scooter parking through the whole city but don’t charge electric scooters. Need more reasons than simple cost switch people over. That’s why this will live or die by government policy, that’s going to be tricky.[/quote]
Exactly, this is the only way. Taiwanese are creatures of convenience.
Anyone know if you can buy one and “NOT” sign a battery subscription contract?
The scooter has all the infrastructure there to be a perfect experimental candidate for hacking and modding your own DIY long range battery gogoro project with built in charger. Extra batteries being fitted in storage area, and underneath plastics in every nook and cranny. 400 + Km’s on a charge?
Just like u-bike, who’s gonna be the first to do it, drive it to Kaohsiung, take pictures, post to FB, tweet about it, hashtag it, instagram it,
at which point the taiwanese media will do a story about it and it might go viral a few days
The old, look! “fish out of water” haha “u-bike out of Taipei” haha “gogoro out of Taipei” haha.
The number one argument “range anxiety” only takes 20 charging stations spread north to south.
I had my doubts about climbing through the mountain regions here in Taiwan, since I know from my own experiences that this can eat up your range considerably.
On my electric bicycle, the range will go down from 70 km to only 20 when climbing steep mountains.
However, either this video is cheating, they could have put a much bigger battery for this clip, or this bike’s performance is excellent.
I believe this is th BeiYi Gong Lu, Ilan to Taipei.
I am not surprised by the video at all although I would have liked to have seen what the range was in the mountains (didn’t watch the 2nd video). I have always thought the performance of the bike would be excellent but the price (initial and monthly) eliminates too many potential buyers. This isn’t comparable to Tesla since the charging network is dependent on a large number of users. Nobody is going to want to drive 10 minutes out of their way to swap batteries.
This scooter doesn’t have the infrastructure to have a range of 400km’s. If you load it up with that many batteries then the weight is going to double and reduce the range which requires you to add more batteries. Right now the city range is quite sufficient but there needs to be an extensive network of charging stations.
He drove for one hour. The speed was between 65 and 85 KM/h.
I’d say, he drove about 70 km.
I checked on google map and the route that I think he took came up with 69 km.
I am not sure why the video stopped, but the battery indicator showed a very low charge.