Right before the upcoming unveiling of Kymco’s new electric scooters, CMC eMoving, a heavyweight in Taiwan’s electric scooter battery consortium (henceforth “the consortium”), announced that it will officially join the PBGN (henceforth “the network”). Spearheading eMoving’s PBGN participation is the company’s first PBGN-compliant electric scooter, to be released in 4Q21.
CMC announced that, as part of its partnership with Gogoro, CMC’s two-wheel electric scooter subsidiary eMoving will integrate Gogoro’s battery replacement system into its scooters. The first eMoving scooters featuring Gogoro’s system will likely be released as early as 4Q20, as previously mentioned.
CMC eMoving will be the fifth member of the network, following Yamaha, Aeonmotor, PGO, and eReady. Remarkably, eMoving is the one of the few companies in the consortium to provide scooters with swappable batteries.
“Very happy to be able to be partners with CMC eMoving,” says Gogoro founder and CEO Horace Luke. “Having toiled in Taiwan’s electric scooter industry deeply for a long time, eMoving is not only a vanguard for green vehicles, but also a responder of market needs with active developmental efforts for different product segments in response to the wave of electric scooters.” The 50-year-old Hong Kong-born businessperson claimed that eMoving’s electric scooters developed with key components, innovative technologies, and the smart battery exchange platform provided by Gogoro will mark a mutual effort by the two companies to engage in an idealistic effort that transforms large towns into a sort of sustainable smart city.
In any case, eMoving can be said to be the protagonist in the metaphorical rechargeable scooter game right now, with sales figures overwhelmingly crushing those of Kymco’s IONEX. Therefore, the aforementioned announcement can be characterized as a general of a large army joining forces with the enemy before the battle has even begun.
The consortium and the network have previously been diametrically opposed to each other, with rechargeable scooters of the former dominated by Kymco and CMC, while replaceable battery scooters of the latter is dominated by Gogoro. Despite this preexisting false dichotomy, the divide in energy systems is, in fact, a nonfactor for scooter manufacturers like CMC or others. For these companies, gasoline engines, rechargeable batteries, and replaceable batteries are all merely differences in energy systems and nothing more. That is why all energy systems are equally viable.
Actually, other than eMoving, eReady also once considered releasing its own rechargeable scooter, but once the company took one look at its own resource allocations, it swiftly ran to join the consortium instead.
However, unlike eReady, eMoving has not stopped its development of rechargeable scooters. eMoving currently plans to engage in the twin pursuit of both rechargeable scooters and scooters with replaceable batteries simultaneously, embracing two worlds, so to speak. That leaves SYM, which previously announced a temporary suspension in electric scooter development, as the lone company yet to make public its choice of charging system(s).
Although battery replacement systems are the more convenient choice for urban dwellers of high-density regions, scooters equipped with these systems pose the problems of battery payment plans and limited battery capacities. On the other hand, rechargeable scooters, although lower in costs and relatively higher in the freedom it provides, space constraints, that is, the lack of charging stations, make it difficult for most urban people to pull the trigger too. How the battle between the two different battery paradigms will play out depends on the competition between companies and governmental attitudes. Going forward, Taiwan’s electric scooter market will be an industry worth watching.
(Image credit: Gogoro)