Politics

Gogoro Eeyo ebike teased with good news for US riders

By Chris Davies/

Electric scooter manufacturer Gogoro is getting into the ebike space, promising a new model that will launch this year. The Gogoro Eeyo will be the company's first expansion out of the electric scooter segment, where it has sought to differentiate itself with an interchangeable battery system. However, unlike Gogoro's earlier models, it's been confirmed that Eeyo will be available in the US.

Details on Eeyo are scant right now, and Gogoro is playing its cards close to its chest. What we do know is that the ebike will launch in the US first, with Gogoro saying that it'll be released in May 2020. Europe and Taiwan will follow on in the summer.

It's arguably a natural expansion for the company. Gogoro revealed its first product back in early 2015, the Smartscooter, an electric scooter that had rider-swappable battery packs. Rather than needing to be plugged in to charge, the rider could simply pull out the two packs and replace them to get back onto the road faster.

The mechanism for that was the Gogoro Energy Network, a series of charging stations where registered users could exchange drained batteries for fully charged replacements. Gogoro launched in Taipei in mid-2015, and then expanded its e-scooter scheme, Coup, into Berlin the following year. Paris followed, then Japan.

In parallel to that, though, Gogoro has always maintained that it's not a scooter company but a battery infrastructure company that just so happens to make transportation. It has long promised that there will be other implementations of its swappable battery tech, teasing other form-factors and applications such as at-home use, including some which won't have wheels at all. Now, Eeyo looks likely to be the first such example of that category expansion.

Ebikes have gained traction in recent years, as lowering prices, longer ranges, and a shift away from cars in cities and other urban areas have left people hunting for alternative transportation. That's led to options running the gamut from retrofitted traditional bicycles set up with electric motors, through to custom-designed ebikes with always-on cellular connectivity, remote tracking in case of theft, and more.

Where Gogoro's new Eeyo will fall on that scale remains to be seen, but the company's electric scooters have always been fairly aggressive with their use of technology and it seems likely that the new ebike will follow suit. At least with a May launch there won't be long to wait to find out.

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