Yamaha has joined hands with Gogoro on battery-swapping electric scooters. The Japanese motorcycle manufacturer has set its footprint in the US electric bicycle market by launching four models. Gogoro, already, has experience in swappable-battery technology as it has a line of highly successful scooters.
It is expected that Yamaha’s future electric scooters will come with Gogoro’s development and manufacturing as well as the battery-swapping technology. Yamaha will design the vehicles. Both the companies intend to launch the first model designed by Yamaha and produced by Gogoro by summer 2019.
Yamaha also plans to expand its lineup through this collaboration, including gasoline-powered models in the Taiwanese market. Gogoro plans to lift its production volume of electric scooters through this partnership.
Both the companies are planning to come out with a new electric scooter that combines both the strengths of Yamaha and Gogoro’s technology. Yamaha will design the new scooter with branding and marketing under its hoods.
Gogoro currently has more than 750 GoStations in Taiwan and is expected to have more than 1,000 by 2019. The technology enables riders to change existing battery with a fresh one from GoStations. This technology would also lower the recurrence of the battery swap stops as more than one battery could be used in the scooters.
The Gogoro’s battery-swapping technology has turned out to be highly successful in the densely inhabited Taiwanese market. Gogoro has helped over 17 million battery swaps at their stations over the past three years. Experts believe that the collaboration with Yamaha could aid Gogoro’s technology to reach out worldwide and this could be used in all developed countries specifically US and UK.