Electric vehicles are becoming more and more popular, as people switch over from traditional combustion engines. Electric vehicles are some of the best alternatives for the eco-conscious, and they are definitely the future. Unfortunately many electric cars that are available right now cost a decent bit of money. Well a new company is about to show up on the scene, and their new revolutionary electric scooter will definitely shake things up.
Known as the Gogoro, this is the “first and only electric smart scooter”. The Gogoro was developed by Horace Luke, who is new to the transportation industry, however not new to technology. Before Luke started his Taiwanese scooter company, he worked with Microsoft on the Xbox division and with HTC. Getting bored with that, he raised $150 million dollars and started Gogoro. The Gogoro scooter aims to solve the problem of city congestion, and is being marketed to be used in mega-cities that have over 10 million people. So far the company is on track to release the device sometime this year.
The scooter is sleek and modern, and obviously emits no pollution. Scooters are used by many people around the world, and hopefully these will catch on. The scooter is powered by a battery pack comprised of 18650 li-ion batteries, the same as the Teslas. The scooter can accelerate from 0-30 in 4.2 seconds, and has a top speed of 60 miles per hour, which is more than enough for a city. The real interesting part of the scooter is the technology. All of the scooters will be connected to a cloud service, that will provide the user with a variety of information and analyzes how users operate the scooter. Users can also pair their smartphones with the vehicle to gain more statistics and updates. Additionally the company is planning to have battery charging stations throughout cities. So when your battery is low, the scooter will navigate to the nearest station where you can swap batteries and get back on the road. These battery stations are estimated to cost $10,000 dollars each, which is cheap compared to the $500,000 dollar Tesla ones.
It seems like the Gogoro will be a revolutionary device for cities. It should help clean up congestion, while reducing carbon emissions as well. They will also be considerably more affordable than other electric vehicles, given the fact that it is a scooter. No prices have be announced yet for how much a scooter will cost, but hopefully we will see them on the roads soon.
Photo from Gogoro
