Taiwan’s Gogoro is looking to scale up investments in the Indian market to make electric two-wheelers locally and set up a battery swapping network to support these vehicles over the next few years.
“We have invested $650-700 million in Taiwan so far to set up 12,000 swapping stations, which has in circulation 1.3 million batteries for us and our partners. The Indian market is 20X that. To set up a swapping network pan-India, the investments will run into several billion dollars. We are not shy of making investments given the potential in the market here,” said Horace Luke, Global CEO, Gogoro.
Gogoro, which listed on NASDAQ last year, has already firmed up plans to invest $1.5 billion in Maharashtra to manufacture vehicles and establish swapping stations in the state by the end of the decade. The company will make additional investments to grow its footprint in other states, Luke said, without sharing details.
Gogoro, in collaboration with Belrise Industries (earlier Badve Engineering), entered a strategic partnership with the Maharashtra government to invest $2.5 billion to develop smart energy infrastructure across the state in January 2023.
Luke said the company will pursue a three-pronged strategy to accelerate the shift to electric mobility in India. “We will make electric two-wheelers for the B2B segment in India, introduce mobility-as-a-service starting with Goa later this month. We have also signed an agreement with MG Group to export electric two-wheelers from here to Nepal.”
Gogoro has a strategic partnership with Zypp Electric to focus on accelerating the shift of urban logistics fleets and last-mile deliveries to electric using battery swapping. The duo launched their B2B pilot in Delhi-NCR December 2022.
The company has also reached an agreement with FutureEV, which will launch a scooter sharing service in Goa exclusively using Gogoro battery swapping and Smartscooters. The company will begin a pilot on Dec 25, 2023, with a commercial launch expected in the first quarter of 2024.
Goa is ranked 15th in the world in vehicle density and with more than 8.5 million tourists annually, it will be mandatory that all new tourist vehicles, rent-a-cab and rent-a-bike, be electric from January 2024, Luke said.
While Gogoro will initially make available its electric two-wheelers to B2B customers in Delhi and Goa, plans have been put in place to roll out these vehicles in Mumbai and Pune in the first half of 2024.
The company will commence sales to personal buyers mid next year.
In all, Gogoro plans to introduce three vehicles – CrossOver GX250, CrossOver 50 and CrossOver S – in the next one year. All three vehicles will have high levels of localisation, with only cells imported from Korea.
Luke said Gogoro is targeting a sizeable presence in the country’s top 10 cities with multiple products in the next five years. The company expects half of its sales to come in from fleet operators in this period, with the remaining volumes coming in from personal buyers.
“India is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, bet for Gogoro (in international expansion). The Indian government wants 80% of two-wheeler/three-wheeler sales in the country to be electric by 2030. The potential to grow is immense,” Luke said.
