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Gogoro®, a Taiwan-based urban transportation solution provider, announced it was partnering with the new Bosch subsidiary, Coup, a smart e-scooter sharing service launching in Berlin today using the award-winning Gogoro Smartscooter™.
"Gogoro is collaborating with the new Coup sharing service because we share the same vision to realize advanced urban mobility in cities," said Horace Luke, co-founder and CEO of Gogoro. "Launching the Gogoro Smartscooter in Berlin as our first expansion market is special because it is a great two-wheel city and is also one of the most sophisticated, progressive and creative cities in the world."
Gogoro introduced the Gogoro Smartscooter™ EV and the Gogoro Energy Network at the Consumer Electronics Show in early 2015 and launched in Taipei Taiwan in August 2015. The Gogoro Smartscooter™ EV is the world's first high-performance, smart electric two-wheel vehicle with swappable batteries. The integrated Gogoro Energy Network is an advanced battery-swapping infrastructure for cities.
Coup Sharing Service
The Coup platform combines Gogoro's design, innovation, performance and connectivity with a custom sharing cloud service that enables customers to have an efficient, sustainable and quiet riding experience. Coup is initially launching with 200 Gogoro Smartscooter vehicles that will be available in the Berlin neighborhoods of Mitte, Prenzlauer Berg, Friedrichshain, and Kreuzberg. They have a governed maximum speed of 45 kph so that everyone over 21 holding a car or motorcycle driving license can use them. The pricing model is based on a flat-rate fee which charges 3 euros for 30 minutes or 20 euros for the whole day. The service is accessed via an accompanying Coup app that intuitively makes it simple to find, book, and pay for a scooter.
"The congestion, parking problems, replacement services and billing by the minute of current sharing services are not customer-centric. With the Gogoro Smartscooter and our Coup smart eScooter sharing, we are confident we are offering a new attractive mobility solution for Berlin," said Urs Rahne, in charge of launching and operating the COUP business in Berlin. "The people of our cities deserve more, they deserve an alternative that saves money, time and enables further independence in their urban lifestyle."
Coup is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bosch with the design, development and operation of the Coup platform developed in close cooperation with Gogoro and BCG Digital Ventures, the venture arm of the Boston Consulting Group.
"Bosch is collaborating closely with Gogoro on this Coup project," said Mat Schubert, general manager of COUP and responsible for this mobility service project at Bosch. "Gogoro has rapidly become the global leader for connected and electrically powered scooters."
"The European market for electric motorcycles and scooters is still in its infancy yet European consumers are clamoring for more sustainable and innovative two-wheel options like what Gogoro is offering with Coup in Berlin today. Over the past year we have been approached by many scooter sharing services from around the world and it was clear that Bosch and Coup had the potential to be a great market maker for scooter sharing in Europe," said Luke.