Back in April, 2021, India’s Hero MotoCorp and Taiwan’s Gogoro first announced their new battery-swapping partnership. At the time, Hero MotoCorp was interested in getting into electric two-wheelers, but it hadn’t done so just yet. Given the success Gogoro had so far been having with its Powered by Gogoro Network and electric scooters in its home market, the math made a whole lot of sense.
That led us to wonder in May, 2021, if Gogoro’s Viva scooter line might head to India sometime soon. We based this speculation on reports that Gogoro had already filed trademarks with Intellectual Property India all the way back in 2019.
While 2022 has undoubtedly been a big year for Gogoro so far, public information regarding its dealings in India has remained quiet. On October 27, 2022, Indian publications including Autocar and Bike Advice noted that Gogoro is apparently planning a major Indian-market announcement on November 3, 2022—which is slightly less than a week away at the time of writing.
Is the company about to announce plans to launch its Powered by Gogoro Network and/or electric scooters within the country? That’s not clear at this point. However, the timing seems particularly interesting to us since Honda launched its own battery swapping solution, the Honda Power Pack Exchanger e: on October 25, 2022. In the launch information, power connection specifications to meet both Japanese and Indian market demands were both listed—and nowhere else in the world, so far.
Now, at the time, Honda also said that its Mobile Power Pack e: battery packs would be used in electric three-wheeled taxis in the Indian market, and made no mention of their use in two-wheelers. As we’ve seen since Honda first started rolling out those power packs a couple of years ago, though, the point of them is to fit into a wide variety of vehicles. From electric delivery scooters already deployed in Japan, to a partnership with Komatsu on light-duty construction equipment, it’s clear that Honda has big plans for both those battery packs and the charging stations that go with them.
Depending on what Gogoro announces next week, this could indicate that India will be the first market where both Gogoro and Honda’s battery-swapping networks may directly compete against one another. To be crystal clear, we don’t know what Gogoro is going to announce next week—so maybe that isn’t what’s happening here. This is all speculation based on the available evidence we’ve seen thus far. It’s certainly interesting to contemplate, though—particularly in the world’s largest two-wheeler market.
Not for nothing, but November 3 is also just two days before November 5—which is the day that EICMA 2022 opens. This timing should likely ensure that whatever news is announced won’t completely get swallowed up by all the new bike announcements that will be bursting the Internet dams across the motorcycle world.
