On August 30, 2022, Gogoro formally announced the expansion of its new rideshare electric scooter service, GoShare, toTaichung City. It’s partnering with Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) and Taichung City to bring the new service to Taiwan’s second-largest city. GoShare scooters are already available in Taoyuan, Taipei, Tainan, New Taipei, Yunlin, and Kaohsiung.
Under the terms of this agreement, Gogoro GoShare Smartscooters will be available 24/7 to all Taichung City residents who wish to use them. Since there are 17 universities located within Taichung City, the Gogoro GoShare program will also provide coupons for rides to 50,000 freshmen at those schools, to encourage adoption of the service.
From Taichung, the GoShare program is planned to expand to neighboring cities and railway stations as well. In April, 2022, the city publicly pledged to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050, and it’s clear that this is a step toward realizing that goal.
“Sustainable energy and transportation are the future, especially in densely populated cities. It is a natural step for Gogoro and a global leader like TSMC and a visionary city like Taichung to come together to provide residents with Gogoro’s two-wheel electric sharing service, GoShare,” Gogoro founder, chairman, and CEO Horace Luke said in a statement.
“Together, TSMC, Taichung City and Gogoro are bringing a new era of sustainable urban transportation to Taichung’s nearly 3 million residents, including subsidized access to more than 50,000 university students and more than 60,000 TSMC employees. This sets a new standard for cities across Taiwan and Asia who want to encourage sustainable transportation,” he concluded.
Wait, what’s this about “more than 60,000 TSMC employees?” That’s another part of the partnership between Gogoro and TSMC, it seems. The world’s largest semiconductor manufacturer also officially joined Gogoro’s GoShare for Business program, which is meant to encourage employees of participating businesses to choose electric scooter rides for their daily commutes by offering attractive discounts on the service.
Building reliable systems like this is an important and necessary step forward, particularly in highly populated urban areas. Not everyone wants to own a vehicle, but most people need to get places. The grip of a global pandemic that keeps developing new variants also makes an idea like this seem more attractive than sitting on potentially crowded public trains and buses.
Even if you love public transit and what it represents, it’s pretty clear that there’s no single solution to reducing carbon emissions. It’s a puzzle that’s going to take multiple pieces to solve—which makes a program like this seem incredibly promising.
Will Gogoro eventually bring GoShare outside of Taiwan in the not-too-distant future, perhaps to India? That's not clear at this point. In any case, we look forward to seeing how Taichung takes to this program, as well as how GoShare continues to expand.
