Gogoro, the paladin of Taiwan’s motorcycle battery replacement, is working with the Indian state of Maharashtra to establish a state-wide battery charging and replacement infrastructure. The initiative will be driven by a “50-50” partnership between Gogoro and India-based automotive systems manufacturer Belrise Industries. Belrise Industries forms an infrastructure company that owns batteries and exchange stations in Maharashtra. Founder Horace Luke.
Additional infrastructure-related investors aim to invest up to $2.5 billion in Maharashtra over eight years, according to a non-binding MOU signed by the State, Gogoro and Belrise at the World Economic Forum in Maharashtra. plans to participate in future joint ventures. Davos.
“Like most infrastructure deployments, the partnership firm will raise money to build the smart battery replacement,” said Gogoro about whether it will use its free cash flow to fund the initiative. In response to a question, Luke told TechCrunch.
Additionally, Gogoro will also set up an India-based company to operate a battery exchange network, a spokesperson told TechCrunch.
According to the MOU, Gogoro and Belrise will begin installing swapping stations in the top 10 cities in Maharashtra. We will start in Mumbai in the next few months and expand beyond that in the future.
Maharashtra is one of India’s largest commercial and industrial centers. As a result, the state has the highest power generation capacity in India, with about a quarter of its power mix coming from wind and solar power. Gogoro said Maharashtra has an energy surplus and would be a good starting point for a connected network.
The joint venture is one of the latest initiatives to be announced in Maharashtra. In September, Mumbai-based battery swapping startup VoltUp partnered with Adani Electricity and Hero Electric to install 500 electric mobility stations in Mumbai over the next two years. Last June, Sun Mobility, a provider of energy infrastructure and services for EVs, announced that it would be working with Amazon India to launch its own battery swap network for his EVs in Mumbai. Sun plans to deploy more than 2,000 of his battery swap stations across the region by 2025.
Gogoro has not disclosed how many swapping stations it plans to build over the next eight years, but Luke said that based on Maharashtra’s population (about 120 million), the network there It will be about four times the size of Gogoro’s Taiwan network. Currently, Gogoro has 12,200 battery exchange stations in Taiwan, and across its network he has over 1.1 million smart his batteries in circulation. Therefore, we can assume that Gogoro plans to build somewhere in the area where he has a 50,000-station ballpark.
Taiwan’s total construction costs have cost Gogoro $640 million over the past seven years, a spokesperson told TechCrunch.
“Battery replacement is creating a new category, building network infrastructure to provoke demand,” said Luke.
A big part of Gogoro’s strategy to drive demand is to offer vehicles with proprietary battery swapping technology. In Taiwan, Gogoro’s battery exchange network will power his 90% of all electric scooters in 2022. This includes 5 of the top 6 electric vehicle manufacturers. While Gogoro has no plans to bring its own branded scooter to India, it is working with Hero MotoCorp, a popular Indian two-wheeler manufacturer, to launch an electric motorcycle based on Gogoro’s technology under the Hero brand.
The partnership was announced two years ago and has yet to ship any vehicles. This makes sense for Gogoro’s business model. The company wants people to use swapping stations, so installing publicly available swapping infrastructure before electric two-wheelers become widespread is Gogoro’s mark of its territory. indicates that
