Kymco Ionex Electric Scooter

Except China is moving in the same direction. That;'s a huge potential market / source of competition.

Eventually everything will move over to electric.
But you do know this year Taiwan had record petrol scooters sales right? Kymco sold something like 300k units alone. Which is pretty crazy.

The question is how long it will take to switch to electric.

Driving or manufacturing is a “shitshow”?

I can only say that I agree Taiwan needs to up their manufacturing game and their international presence. However, Kymco is a decent brand for quality. I assume SYM and PGO are just as good, too, although I have no experience with either. Gogoro seems to be good-quality, too. I’m less familiar with Luxgen and other Taiwan-manufactured automobiles, but I don’t hear many complaints.

I’d say watch Chinese smartphone and car sales. China doesn’t seem interested in HTC or Asus, yet the Taiwanese seem somewhat fine with Xiaomi and Oppo (I’m not sure about Huawei’s sales here). And then, you’d have to see what Xiaome, Oppo, and Huawei can do in international markets. The rest of the world seems reluctant to drive Chinese cars, but scooters may give them an inroad. Have to wait and see there.

If it’s true that Taiwan had record petrol scooter sales, there are a couple of reasons: phasing out of older, less safe/efficient scooters; scooters now are larger and more comfortable for longer rides, reducing the reliance on more expensive cars; there isn’t really a decent electric alternative to petrol scooters–not even Gogoro when you look at the fundamentals.

Manufacturers offered a rebate to stimulate petrol scooters sales last year, partly to compete with gogoro. It worked unfortunately.
I think there are plenty of electric alternatives and public transport alternatives in much of Taiwan but driving , insuring, taxing and parking a petrol scooter is just really really cheap and that’s the reason most own one along with ingrained habits. Saving dollars but wrecking the environment and health.

Almost 1 million petrol scooters were sold in Taiwan last year which was a man made environmental and health disaster as they will be around for years.
Kymco sold 375,000 alone . A lot of them were exchanges but still its bad news as it means they won’t purchase an electric scooters for years. Then they claim ’ it’s a mystery’ why lung cancer prevalence is at record levels here.

Taiwan govt has said they will stop sales of petrol scooters in 2035.

http://www.chinatimes.com/newspapers/20180104000219-260202

exactly what Brian Jones said.

add that to the lack driving laws and ability to park scooters anywhere. what else could i call it than a shitshow? disneyland it ain’t.

and didn’t china ban petrol scooters like over ten years ago? couldn’t compare it to taiwan really. although gogoro is light years ahead of their e-bikes. they even have gogoro copys there, so that says a lot about their e-bikes.

I’m all for improved public transportation, but I support petrol scooters over Gogoro’s closed, proprietary system which locks customers in–an evil practice that must die. My wife will be in need of a new scooter soon, and both of us would’ve chosen petrol over Gogoro. Gogoro is taking advantage of zero competition and playing the environmental guilt card to lock customers into their closed system. I do thank them for moving the industry forward, and I hope they stick around as a viable alternative keeping other manufacturers somewhat honest, but I have no desire to be controlled by them. If anything, I hope this competition from Kymco forces Gogoro to up their game and offer home chargers, a plug in, and reasonably-priced technology sharing/licensing.

We will find out before the week’s end on Gogoro’s reaction to the Ionex. I received an e-mail about tuning into a press release on 3/30 (it could be 3/29, but too busy to look up the actual date).

Check out this article about Gogoro’s CEO reaction to Ionex via e-mail to their staff that was leaked on the Gogoro Fan Club FB page:

I’d be happy to get a gogoro, but the amount of their stations in yilan is a big fat goose egg.
Also, gogoro’s ass is really thicc.

jpg

With kymco I’m sure recharging won’t be an issue, and that’s a big plus.

The idea it’s kind of call phone.

Gogoro is now offering home charging as well, thanks to Kymco I guess :slight_smile:

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These are basically nearly identical scooters to Kymcos WEMO scooters. Its like U-Bike but for scooters. Theyre all over Taipei, you rent with an APP. I use it a few times a week. Very comfortable ride I enjoy it more than riding my Yamaha Cygnus 125. Very cheap to rent, I spend like average of 30-40 NT per trip around Taipei. The only downside is the battery drains much faster than the battery meter says.

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I asked about the home charging unit from Gogoro. Even if you charge the battery at home, you still get charged for the distance you traveled on your own electricity. Why bother recharging at home then… Gogoro’s business model IMO is going to fail them, unless people are able to buy their own batteries.

Thanks for this information !

I’m currently keeping my eyes on the standard electric motorbikes from Kymco/Sym, some of the models aren’t looking bad at all.
Iirc Kymco has one with 100kms of autonomy +10kms emergency battery, all rechargeable at any power outlet, for around 40k. Considering that I need a motorbike just to ride around Yilan, or to carry my photography gear to the bus station and then transfer to Taipei, the starting price would be similar to a regular scooter but then I’d not have to worry about petrol for as long as I the battery survives.
I still need to visit one of their stores to ask about battery replacements.

It will cater to those that live too far out of the way to battery swap stations, those going on long trips or to those that live on the east coast. When they announced the home charger, they also announced they were installing 1 (maybe 2?) stations on the east coast, but it’s very clear that it’s not enough. However, it’s a start.

Please don’t think badly of me for asking, but can someone else please confirm this. This seems like such a deal-breaker that I can’t believe it’s humanly possible for a company to be so stupid/greedy.

I think you’re really paying for the expensive Lithium ion batteries. They start degrading right away and depending on how they are programmed can last about 2-10 years max (Leaning more towards 2 years)

Electricity is cheap but replacing those batteries are expenive

需搭配換電馳服務方案使用。

Needs to used with battery service plans.

To answer your question, yes. You get charged for using your own electrcity to charge your batteries. I assume the product isn’t selling well. Nonetheless, definitely a minority that actually has to rely on the charger for power.