How Gogoro in Taiwan Built an EV Battery Swap Network
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- Опубліковано 20 вер 2024
- One of the biggest issues with replacing gas powered vehicles with electric ones has to do with recharging. Today, it is simple and easy to fill up your gas powered car. Gas stations are convenient and ubiquitous. You pay, fill up the tank and boom you’re done.
For electric vehicles, things are different. Recharging can take a significant amount of time even at the more advanced charging stations. Having it take 30 minutes is not uncommon.
Recharging should at least partly replicate the gas station experience. But the task of building out an entire network on par with modern gas stations is pretty daunting. But that is something that Taiwan-based Gogoro is trying to do with their battery swap stations.
In this video we are going to look at how Gogoro built out its comprehensive, super convenient 2,000-station strong battery swap network across Taiwan.
Errata:
- I mentioned that the battery pack was 12 kg, it was actually 9 kg. Sorry for that.
Links:
- The Asianometry Newsletter: asianometry.com
- Patreon: / asianometry
I didn't think battery swapping was a feasible alternative to charging but it makes a lot of sense with scooters and Gogoro's implementation
youbcould still build a car with 20 gogoro batteries. then you have the option of plugging in, OR pumping 40 reps of 15kg
i have been building and selling ebikes using greenworks pro lawnmower bats for 5 yr, it's slowly growing.
I was very impressed by the Gogoro system when I visited Tapei in Feb 2020. When I visited Chengdu a long time ago in 2010 I saw many electric scooters, but not swap-able batteries. Great to see that Gogoro is attempting to spread its technology throughout the world.
Taipei and Chengdu are from different countries tho.
Thank you very much for the english subtitles, cheers from Mexico
I'm really impressed that this is aleady present in a mature form in Taiwan. I always imagined battery swapping becoming big for EVs once it can be automated, but it never occurred to me that electric scooters also benefit from battery swapping. It is no wonder that they are expanding into India. Like the video mentions, battery swapping removes the only downside that an electric vehicle has.
It is also great that the network will take care of replacing worn batteries. Normally, there would be a big repair will when your vehicle's battery needs to be replaced!
I hope I can see some of these stations the next time I visit Taiwan. I'm interested in how exactly they implemented it from an engineering standpoint.
Have used these scooters with the battery swap system and found the experience to be pleasant and quick. For daily commutes and local travel the systems is very suitable. One of the issues that I did not find appealing was the subscription only model (and accompanying vendor lock). From my understanding there is no sort of pay as you use/swap option. So owners are locked into paying monthly subscription fees regardless if they charge at home, or have varying use from month to month. Competition by other battery/charging companies using a battery standard such as this would/will be welcome once the technology has matured and become more widely adopted.
A local Taiwanese company called Aeon Motors seems like its doing really well being part of the Gogoro Network. Literally went from being a scooter also-ran to being a market leader in terms of e-scooters.
They Will be more stronger, when taiwan will move back in china hands. Chinese market Will boost them.
@@angryblackman857 thanks for the laugh
@@LVTwinturbo we all know china Will take back Taiwan cause it's chinese land, and no one will stop them. It's just a matter of time.
@@angryblackman857 been hearing that since 1949
@@angryblackman857 nyga man?
Great idea for scooters. Vietnam needs the same. For cars the inconvenience, queue, slow swap time makes it an evolutionary dead end.
Charging stations take longer, which generates longer queues and are therefore LESS convenient.
>> Battery swapping makes a huge amount of sense from a customer point of view.
But, the business side shirks away from the huge infrastructure cost, that's required up front. Gogoro effectively solved the infrastructure issue for scooters. They could do the same with cars, by leveraging their scooter swap stations and expanding them to be usable for cars. The biggest problem here is getting a (several) car manufacturer on board. The easiest would probably be a cooperation with a ride-sharing service, that owns their own car fleet.
@@andreasbucher7717 Car batteries are far heavier and bulkier than the little scooter pods a child can easily handle. You'd need some heavy duty equipment and storage space.
I can't wait for gogoro stations in India. Exciting times. 😁
Great to see 58k subscribers.
When it reaches 100k, it will practically rocket off !!
Check out the No of subscribers two months later! Close to 2X.
I am proud of Taiwan that Go Green with the Scooter! Since 2015 I did not visited Kaohsiung with tons of noisy motorbikes!
Here in Tainan, gogoro is everywhere, it seems to be very successful, if anything the air pollution needs vast improvement and electrifying the scooter will help, plus a lot of Taiwan power in nuclear so it’s. Very green in regards to carbon footprint
Philippines... well... Manila need this! #Gogoro should think about expanding in other Asian countries. There's opportunity.
There is news that Ayala and Gogoro entered a partnership to roll out this in the Philippines. More likely a pilot test first in Metro Manila.
Just a word of Advice, if you use currencies in countries that use common denominations, it would help to distinguish between USD to NTD.
PLEASE get this rolled out in VIệt Nam!!! This one be great in most all Asian countries that primarily use motorbikes!!! GREAT IDEA!!!!! 😀😊❤❤🙏🙏 ~~~ Norris
This is the face of the future. Modular batteries are just amazing
Great video/analysis! As of mid-2023, they're backing off from China a bit and going hard in India, Singapore, and the Phillipines!
I understand the battery swap stations and concept are important to gogoros image, but i also think incentivizing home charging will ease the burden of the swap network and be cheaper for the company overall as a model.
Glad you covered this topic. After seeing the increasing prevalence of both gogoro stations and gogoro scooters I was very curious to know more about them. I'm also curious how much of their income comes from the network and how much comes from scooter sales. I see more scooters from PGO, Yamaha, and others running on the Gogoro network. I wonder if this could be a future driver of sales especially when I've heard Gogoro's sales slumped recently. Do you think Kymco will eventually abandon their Ionex network? With the exception of iRent24 deploying a fleet of Manny EVs I have seen very few scooters running on their network
Hi, I'm a gogoro user from Taiwan. Kymco is building the 3rd generation ionex stations in Taiwan now, but the quantity is still insufficient.
@@chuchenting I didn't know they had different generations for the stations. What is the difference between the second and third generation?
@@davidpendleton4464 Capability riding range and the amount of each scooter will carry. The 3rd generation of ionex is much more like how gogoro does now, but gogoro's two batteries' riding range is 170km (riding in 30kmph), and ionex 3.0 is 155km (riding in 30kmph). And ionex 3.0 just like how gogoro has single battery scooter and double batteries scooter. But please notice that the 2nd generation ionex scooter is not compatible with the 3rd gen ionex batteries, different generations are using their own battery swap station and system.
@@chuchenting Thank you for explaining it to me. I must be more familiar with the Ionex 3.0 system
@@davidpendleton4464 Gogoro asked KYMCO to join the Network before but they refused. So no.
It should be noted that the prices are NT$, not USD (about $10-30 per month for the fees). Price per Ah is useless and purposfully misleading, should be price per kWh.
I think battery swapping in cars is more dificult because it directly clashes with structural and thermal needs but I think it fits perfectly for urban vehicles.
probably solution like some old school phone and computer, some internal batteries and some external batteries, user can swap when travel long range..
but i don't know about the weight tho
Check out the chinese electric automaker NIO, they are able to roll out electric cars with swappable batteries.
Seems like they are going public through a SPAC. It was on Bloomberg.
pretty simple and smart business
This Gogoro network is still the fastest, most efficient way of transitioning Asia and Africa to electrification as soon as possible. Minimal infra for the stations, you can mass manufacture those and place them on 7/11s or other convenience stores. You can mass produce the battery units to further lower cost. Those are infinitely recyclable and would automatically upgrade the fleet with new battery tech without needing a new scooter. Since scooters and small cars dominate the asian markets (Wuling is the mkst sold ev in China) this battery swap system of Gogoro with small 13kg units that can be expanded to 4 to 6 on a bigger vehicle would be the fastest way to maake asian markets adopt EVs. Especially as delivery services are quickly replacing malls, scooters are now INCOME GENERATING ASSETS. This market need exponential expansion.
Effective AND cheap. While being also convenient. This thing is great.
I can also see an additional market in combination with electric bicycles.
Regarding cars
You could just as likely swap several batteries, for a car. The scooters already have two batteries. Having a car with, lets say twenty, such batteries easy to imagine. At the swap station you would only swap at most a bit more than halve. This should take maybe a bit longer, than swapping a single one, but that's it. You would only need to expand the existing scooter network.
Seems like such a system would do really well in Singapore, though they have to be air conditioned for passengers to survive the heat 😅
are motorbikes common in Singapore?
@@MarkWTK Mostly cars and vans cause they're air conditioned, mopeds would be really useful for shopping trips though
Singapore could use those enclosed EV bikes.
if the batteries survive the heat. but also it would be better for more dense city areas so both islands work but other cities might have it hard from being too large or spread out.
@@Yohan5 Summer in Taiwan is significantly hotter than Singapore.
for scooter, battery swap is a much better solution than charging because of shorter range those small battery can handle. while for e-car they better stick with charging
Gogoro is also available in madrid and berlin
Nope, they quickly failed in Berlin about two years ago. Had two of these stations, was a joint venture with german Bosch-group. Sold everything long ago, some of the scooters may still be running under the Tier brand.
Great content as always!
What is the average life of these batteries and how much does it cost to maintain them? The business model is quite simple. You can probably calculate irr and roe pretty easily
If they weigh 12kg a pop they're lead acid batteries for sure. They're dirt cheap to produce hand have a near 100% recycleability.
Latest batteries provide 1.74kwh each unit with 21700 Li-ion batteries supplied by Panasonic. A pair of those will provide about 100KM of range. Truly the weight should provide much more KWH. But I can't find why they're not.
I had an electric moped for years, charging at home was never an issue.
That depends on housing type. If we live in high rise apartments, we cannot bring the vehicle to upper floors for charging.
@@weithiamneo1442 if the apartment building does not have underground parking capacity that can be equiped with chargers , then that old building should be brought down before it decides to do so on
@@weithiamneo1442 even if you have charging station network mopeds have less than 5kwh battery capacity, if a 50kwh car can charge for 30-45minutes the moped battery should charge for 1/10 time (3minutes, max 4.5minutes).
I have a Niu and it is an issue for me, i wish we had this in Amsterdam.
sarcasmo57, thx for making the most shortsighted irrelevant comment ever... good luck taking longer distant trips... smh...
The Aptera is light and small enough to not require a large battery. Has Gogoro looked into swapping the Aptera batteries? They are also solar charged but it could work for a similarly light and aerodynamic car. The vending machines might be larger than the scooter ones but not so large that it would need a ton of space.
This is amazing
When I was in Shanghai in 2010, they had alot of electric bikes. I was not used to them just driving to our backs with no sound at all. But I wonder, if they have electric bikes, why would they swap it out for a gogoro bike? I was still super impressed when I saw it.
Most electric scooters used in China are with limited weight, power and speed. They require no drivers' license to operate. Gogoro is rated as equivalent of 125 cc motorbikes and require a motorcycle's driver license to operate in Taiwan.
@@jnyylee Gogoro will need to do quite a lot of research on how people in China use scooters and it has to be done on a city by city basis. The insights you gain from Shanghai are almost useless to you in Shenzhen.
@@ChairmanMo But like who cares? Gogoro are not going to China any soon.
@@veryinterestingpersonaliti8321 I'm just making a simple speculation and observation on what would happen if they do. I understand that they don't have to enter China.
@@veryinterestingpersonaliti8321 Listen to the later part of the lecture. Gogoro is going to mainland China.
Good, I don't need to worry about battery age.
I have a "NIU" scooter... i take my battery out and charge it at work or at home... its the best
great system..BUT there would be too many batteries they make just to fill the battery stations..atleast triple the numbers of motorcycle built..
9:50 "There remains just one private company trying to make battery swap stations for cars wark -- China-base Nio." Isn't Geely also rolling out charging stations in China?
Just Have a Think is reporting that Geely has 1000 stations: ua-cam.com/video/2-xWYScsvts/v-deo.html (see around 7:05)
Get this to roll out asap
Great system - although I think that the batteries, having been partly funded by the government, should be an open standard, and other vehicle manufacturers should be able to use them.
Our government was planning to adopt gogoro's swapping system as open standard, but other scooter manufactures refused this idea !
@@damnalfie They would rather build their own standard and stations at this point? It makes no sense
@@LeoJackson98 They are the biggest scooter manufacturer in Taiwan, taking over 30% market sharing for decades, too arrogant to cooperate with other company. I always call them the NOKIA in Taiwan scooter industry....
@@LeoJackson98 And yes, they really built their swapping system for 5 years, only taking 5% of electric market sharing and the rest 90% is PBGN alliance (Power by Gogoro Network)
Great video, but NIO is not privately held.
The 299/Mon is about $11usd, right? For unlimited "fuel"? Seems like a bargain! How much are the scooters? I feel like some info on the consumer value proposition would have been interesting too
299/month is not unlimited "fuel". I am a Gogoro owner and uses 499/month for 315km.
@@liteningpedals9432 so $20 for 315km? Doesn't seem bad to me!
@@robdavy4468 Yes, and there are more options depending on how you ride. You can also change your monthly plan every month if you want to.
excellent video john. can we get one on the china crackdowns on big tech and education companies
Is gogoro looking into expanding its business model into other areas such as acting as a battery peaker plant? Taiwan really could use a few more battery powered power plant peaker or not. Do you know if they have plans to use the batteries for other stuff like camping?
Nice essay
Electric scooters also get free parking in Taipei and New Taipei... not sure about other cities though.
great video, thank you and posted to reddit
Fantastic! It'd do wonder for pollution issue in Taiwan:)
if only they made removable batteries for cars, would be a huge thing to achieve but could work, swap and go
or maybe if they had an additional battery in the boot that could be used as a reserve drive while the driver can find a charging spot
I wish they also give us the option to own the battery.
Got to challenge you on all the gas locations being so convenient. It took decades to to create the physical locations and delivery infrastructure. Seems this new tech adoption is blazing past that!
Is there anything happening like this in the US?
Did you miss investing g in Tesla? Invest in GGR and get filthy rich! It’s the Tesla of 2 wheelers!!!
Why has Gogoro ripped off the Arduino AG trademark?
excuse me?
@@wenyicvs Compare them for yourself.
oh yes. nearly identical.
Tell Arduino to sue Gogoro out of business. Since Taiwan want to be like U.S. Companies in U.S would definitely go this route. SUE!
@@vangcruz4442 you are Chinese troll. get back to your hole.
This model is very nice. I wondered how it might apply to cars and you touched on that. I wonder if they could do something similar using a set of maybe 8 or 12 modular batteries each with full gouges and somehow make the battery management system balance usage over 4 batteries at a time so you only deplete them in sets until all are used this way light users could just replace a small number of modules at the swap station..?
Perhaps, but for EV cars, due to the battery weight and shielding needed, there seems a strong incentive to distribute the heavy weight on the bottom of the body and distribute it through the body of the car. Thus the skateboard design of a lot of the EV car chassis with batteries built in. This with make modular packs more challenging, imho....
@@jctseng Those are fair points. The modules could be shaped to be more flat and perhaps loaded along a row under the driver and passenger sides to keep balance perhaps? It also occurs to me someone might try loading fewer modules which could cause a balance issue. The industry would have to enforce that all bays are loaded even if one or more of them are failed to avoid balance issues.
Probably what we need is a battery that had the same dimension as a laptop.
just build a car that holds more gogoro's
@@asantaraliner volumetrically inefficient
Sadly this would get vandalized in most part of Europe, as much as we have advanced social institutions that the world would be right to envy, we also have a bunch of people who consider themselves outsiders and don't give a shit about being civil.
And manufacturers are trying to make battery to be structure part of the vehicle, making swapping more difficult
From the logo I thought the topic about Arduino
300 per month? Is that NTD? If not that’s quite pricey
it's TAIWAN DOLLERS. ROUGHLY 10 USD
@@wenyicvs yeah sure, 10 fking dollars for a ~5-10k battery haha 🙃
@@michelbruns No. 10USD for a monthly plan (of unknown milage). You buy the first two batteries yourself with the scooter. Then you swap them for charged ones. Did you not hear a word the man said?
@@michelbruns stupid ppl
Can't fine stock price
i still prefer giant e-bike. here in hualian, gogoro battery station is still rare. gogoro totally not worth the price.
I wish they would allow us to own the battery if we prefer that option.
@@ManazAnsar yeah, it would be nice if we can buy the battery without owning the scooter.
#CENN
they are currently doing fine in taiwan where they got the support of government.
but I doubt they can do the same in other countries without government support.
I can already see a lot of problem specially for united states where people are morons.
1. they will try to create a new devices where the gogoro batteries can be used to by simply learning how the bottom connectors works.. they will use it as portable generators for their power tools or use it to power their houses haha
2. looters might hacked the station and steal those batteries and sell it on ebay.
3. they would destroy those station for no reason just for social media content or something.
without government protection they would just slowly going to go bankrupt.
Second
Ahh. The plus side of geographically small nation, infrastructures problem are easier to tackle
Arduino+ Google?
But 300 to 400 dollars per month looks much expensive
well, it's 400 nt dollars not usd. that converts to around 15 USD which is reasonably cheap considering with a combustion motorcycle you get around 150-200km for every 15 USD of petrol.
Gabriele, good obervation and clarification. I am tempted to comm3nt on the video that the author could specify that the "$$$" value is in New Taiwan Dollar (NTD also known as Taiwan Dollar (TWD) and not in US dollar. Which as of today (23 March 2023) $400 TWD is about $14 USD or $180USD a year.
According the news of Sep 16, the worldwide largest manufacturing giant - Taiwan Hon Hai/Foxconn becomes the major shareholder of Gogoro.
Third
I don't understand why everyone is obsessed with "replacating the gas station experience". With EVs, you almost NEVER need to go to a charging station in the first place, because you recharge every night AT HOME. Isn't that infinitely better??
Depends
Yearly subscriptions, hence recurring revenue. I hate it.
Battery swapping won't last forever as battery tech improves
It depends on the local situation and not every situation is the same.
mercedes eqs's battery is already big enough to travel from one end of taiwan to the other. it wont be long bwfore this is Standard
Battery swapping a EV bike is fast and easy.... Plus DC Fast charging is very expensive to add to an EV bike... So Battery swapping will be around far longer than than the trolls that do not get it...
@@nc3826 i was talking about cars tho
@@Marvin-ii7bh no one cares what where talking about....
and cars were not subject matter of the post, was it? so what you said was irrelevant
What’s the point of having a van come come charge your car lol
Nio????
????????
Nio who?
Negative
Gogoro has growth limitations once the EV industry becomes automated since most of the profits will be generated by the infotainment/software content platforms rather than the ride sharing platform where the passenger vehicle industry will excel. Bikes simply arent built for that type of future. Also, most of the value-adds in the transportation energy industry will be generated by battery manufacturers like LG Chem and CATL who will eat off the revenues of EV platform companies like Gogoro.
you just don't have a clue about gogoro success in Asia. they have both the software and battery technology. most of the people use bike as daily driver in the areas, and battery swapping is the most successful mode of EV. it's not cars.
Have you been to SE Asia? HCM City 3 million scooters. 75% of vehicles are scooters, big cities like Hanoi over 90%. There's literally no room for cars and everyone is getting killed by motorbike exhaust in endless traffic jams.
@@goldreserve I'm sure people can bingewatch Netflix while writing up their company reports on a e-scooter. I'm sure that's a sight to watch lol. You simply don't understand what the EV industry will become once automated driving becomes the norm. EVs aren't just about transportation. It's the next smartphone
Don't see any conflict between automated EV and electric scooters. Multi-mode transports have been part of our lives for over two decades, cars, scooters, subway, high speed rails... We flexibly use different transports for different travel purposes. Automated-EV, once matured, tends to become a commercial service rather than a privately owned car in my opinion.
@@jnyylee Once EVs become automated, people will use, charge, and interact with their smartphones, computers, built-in AI/IoT/OS systems by freeing up the time and effort of driving. That's where all the profit is in. The mobility space itself will continue to lose value as it becomes essential service and therefore has growth limitations. You can't have this user experience with scooters, it's just a different experience. Plus, scooters are mosty used in countries with hot and humid climates, since they don't have to deal with snow/coldness. Countries in hot climates also tend to be poorer and have lower buying power than countries up north. This means Gogoro will continue to focus on low-profit margins.
First
It’s a bad business model the only thing that goes bad on a electric vehicle is the battery so always letting people get a new battery every day is no way to have customers for new cars after market saturation is reached
People are silly and will buy a new model for a random bell and whistle, pretty colour, comfortable seat etc. Plus the subscription model points at that being the real revenue generator, not the bike itself.
battery swapping is stupid.
they are expensive and if you take care of the battery and dont fast charge alot youll want to keep your battery pack.
battery swapping stations (like petrol have) allow a limitless range..... so its smarter than the trolls that do not get it...
@@nc3826 I get it ... But battery degradation is associated with charge cycles . Batteries charcged more and faster will degrade quicker .
So battery swapping stations are stupid you're better off charging at your house. Range anxiety is a myth
@@ashishpatel350 WADR, you do not get it since your assumptions are all wrong ... Like it or not bike Battery Swapping allows for longer ranges it's not about anxiety...
and it allows for cheaper, (off peak) slower and more control charging... so it extends battery life... so the battery tends to be taken care better.... (and batteries temporarily not used in bikes, can even be used to balance the grid, with proper pricing structure)
So someone here is acting like a stupid troll about about something they do not fully understand... the only issue will be expensive of creating a network.. .... so there has to be a sufficient demand?
BTW Honda and other companies are trying to create a standard.... for bike battery swapping..