CES 2015: Gogoro unveils smart scooter designed for megacities

The company unveiled the vehicle after working in stealth mode for four years while attracting £99m (€127m, $150m) of investment. Rather than plugging in the scooter at home, drivers will swap batteries at a group of charging stations that the company calls the Gogoro Energy Network.

Although building an entirely new infrastructure to support a single product seems like a difficult task, co-founder and chief technology officer Matt Taylor argues that the challenge is achievable. ‘It’s £6,600 [€8,470, $10,000] for us to drop one in, and it’s not much bigger than a Coke machine,’ says Taylor. ‘Our society is already dropping machines at this scale all over the world. The idea of deploying smaller, low-footprint charging stations is not as daunting as it seems.’

The Smartscooter also has 30 onboard sensors and cloud connectivity, enabling it to track top speed and range so drivers can optimise power and energy consumption. It reaches a top speed of 60mph and can travel about 60 miles before a charge. The company has yet to disclose which cities will receive Gogoro first.

Keep an eye on our Seed and Insight News sections for more from 2015 International CES this week.