Forbes, May 4, 2015 (I)

choi

Aaron Tilley, Tesla Meets Vespa; A start-up is selling Asia’s urban millions on a smartphone-sleek electric scooter to replace an ocean of dirty motorbikes.
www.forbes.com/sites/aarontilley ... tesla-for-the-rest/

Quote:

“Taiwan makes for an ideal proving ground, with 15 million scooters in a country of 23 million, one of the highest scooter-to-human ratios in the world”)

“"the two [Luke and Taylor] thought they’d be able to fast-track a new bike using off-the-shelf components from Taiwan’s massive manufacturing base. But Luke soon realized that few suppliers would be able to meet their performance demands. The biggest supplier of electric motors, for example, was more attuned to building motors for So Gogoro had to set about building almost everything itself.s and blenders. So Gogoro had to set about building almost everything itself."

Note:
(a) "Four years ago [now co-founder and CEO Horace] Luke 陸學森 and his former HTC colleague Matt Taylor [now co-founder and chief technology officer] set out to do just that. They left the corporate world and launched a startup called Gogoro that brings to bear design, technology and marketing experience also honed at Nike, Microsoft and HTC to create an electric motorbike called the Smartscooter. * * * Born in Hong Kong to two accountants, Luke moved with his family to Seattle when he was 13."
(i) Gogoro has no Chinese name, and it is unclear how they came up with this name.
(ii) bring something to bear: "exert influence or pressure so as to cause a particular result"
www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/de ... g-something-to-bear

(b) "With an electric motor equivalent to a 125cc engine, it * * * maxes out at 60mph [95km per hour] * * * You can * * * custom horn sounds via Bluetooth from a smartphone app. Gogoro hasn’t decided on a price, but Luke says it would be in the $2,000 to $3,000 range of Honda and Yamaha bikes ubiquitous in Asia."
(i) The English Wikipedia page for Gogoro says "Smartscooter 智慧雙輪 is an electric scooter * * * It's powered by an electric motor developed by Gogoro * * * Instead of plugging into an outlet to recharge, the Smartscooter runs on swappable Panasonic lithium ion 18650 batteries."
(ii) Gogoro's website states, "遍佈城市的GoStation™電池交換站供應能量飽滿的電池，你可提前預約或直接前往，隨時獲得充足的電力。同時透過電池交換，同步行車資訊，並即時報告車況診斷異常。使用能源可以更乾淨、更輕鬆也更聰明！"

(c) "Riders won’t own the batteries. Instead, they’ll pay a low monthly fee to swap portable batteries as needed from a network of charging stations. * * * His battery-charging GoStations, roughly the size of a snack vending machine, can be screwed into place anywhere there’s an AC outlet, and cost less than $10,000 apiece. In less than a minute riders can pull up, yank out the 20-pound battery from a compartment under the scooter’s seat and be on their way."
(d) "Gogoro itself has plenty of financing, having early on raised $40 million from Samuel Yin 尹衍樑 (estimated net worth: $4.2 billion), CEO of Ruentex Group 潤泰集團, which holds interests in retail, financial services and real estate"