Taiwanese electric scooter maker Gogoro introduced Tuesday a battery-swapping network and three smartscooters to India, marking the company’s official entry into the world’s most populous country and biggest two-wheeler market.
Gogoro CEO Horace Luke told TechCrunch that the company sees India as a central hub for manufacturing and plans to export its smartscooters from the country to other markets, starting with neighboring country Nepal. The company is working to launch its India-made scooter in Kathmandu by partnering with Nebula Energy.
“The interest of India is very strategically important to us. Over the last couple of years, we’ve built a strong team here,” Luke said in an interview.
Gogoro kicked off its strategic entry into India with a battery-swapping network aimed at business-to-business customers in Delhi and Goa. The Gogoro-branded battery-swapping stations will also be rolled out for logistics and business customers in Mumbai and Pune in the first half of 2024. The company will open the battery swapping network to consumers, namely two-wheeler commuters, in the second quarter.
Alongside the battery-swapping network, Gogoro launched its India-manufactured smartscooter CrossOver GX250, which will be available immediately in the country. The CrossOver 50 and CrossOver S will be shipped later in 2024.
The CrossOver GX250, which is being manufactured at a Foxconn facility in Maharashtra, has a 2.5 kW Direct Drive system that is rated to deliver a top speed of over 60kph. The two-wheeler also comes with four cargo areas, including a platform design headlight, foot, seat and rear cargo space, and carries a flippable rear seat that can add cargo storage as needed.
The scooter is touted to be “uniquely designed” for India, keeping in mind the roads and comfort demanded by Indian commuters.
Tuesday’s launch is just the beginning for Gogoro’s plans for India.
Gogoro said that later this month it will offer its mobility-as-a-service platform GoShare by partnering with an Indian startup FutureEV. The startup will offer Gogoro battery swapping and smartscooters in Goa, which gets more than 8.5 million tourists annually.
Gogoro started looking at India as its market in 2021 by partnering with the Indian automobile giant Hero MotoCorp. The Taiwanese company also started the pilot of its smartscooters in the country in late 2022 and announced an investment of $1.5 billion in Maharashtra in January this year. The company also backed EV fleet management startup Zypp Electric in its $25 million investment round to test its operations in the country.
Luke said the company has invested “tens of millions” of dollars in India and is set to put more money in.
”We’re not shy on investment because we do need that. We do see the India market as a very high opportunity for Gogoro,” he told TechCrunch.
India, which targets to have 30% of all its fleet electric by 2030, sold more than a million EVs last year and crossed a million mark in nine months of this year, Rohit Kumar Singh, the country’s consumer affairs secretary, said at the launch event.
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