One of the First Big Steps By a Major Manufacturer
Yamaha recently teamed up with the Taiwan company Gogoro to build an electric scooter with swappable batteries. The idea was to take the powertrain that Gogoro has and apply it to a Yamaha scooter. The result is the EC-05 you see before you.
The performance specs of the scooter have not yet been announced, but electrek noted that the scooter’s guts are similar to that of the Gogoro 2 Series. That means you can expect the top speed to be around 55 mph and a range of about 60 miles.
The good news about this scooter is that it uses swappable batteries. Gogoro has over 1,000 battery swapping stations in Taiwan. You can also charge your batteries (there are two on the bike) at home if you want. Yamaha plans to start delivering this scooter to market in August.
The plans are to have it only in Taiwan currently. However, I see no reason why it couldn’t be sold in other places around the world. Of course, nowhere else in the world has the Gogoro battery-swap stations, so maybe it will take time for these to come to other markets.
All I know is that this sounds like a serious move in the right direction. Yamaha put out a very obnoxious video for the scooter. I’ve linked it below. If they were trying to make the bike look cool, they picked the wrong song for the video. Oh well.