In late May, Terpel, a Columbian fuel and lubricant company and Gogoro, a Taiwanese company developing battery swapping for two-wheelers, launched Gogoro’s battery swapping platform for e-scooters in Bogota, Columbia.

The news comes after continued success for Gogoro for e-scooter battery swapping in Asia, where it records up to 400,000 daily battery swaps through its network of 12,500 swapping stations. 

Two-wheelers are a major sector in many countries and cities, making up a substantial portion of personal transport.  Now with the shift towards electrification intensifying, the e-scooters market is growing in tandem, particularly in cities where distances are short and vehicles often need to be small. Since 2015, Gogoro has approached this movement with a swappable battery platform, where riders can change their scooter’s battery pack by visiting battery swapping stations. These stations have a bank of battery packs, where users simply exchange the discharged pack in their scooter for a fully charged one. The platform operates through a subscription model, where riders pay a monthly or annual fee for a set range, which equates to an equivalent number of swaps. With more and more scooter manufacturers partnering with the platform, it looks set to be a mainstay for the sector. 

E-scooters have a different set of requirements to passenger EVs and therefore require a different approach to electrification. Having small and easily accessible battery packs enables battery swapping to exceed on a large scale and makes more sense than cable-based charging, especially in cities where charging access may be limited. The infrastructure required for battery swap stations is also significantly less than for passenger EVs, which has further accelerated the success of the system.