Taiwan-based Gogoro is the world's largest battery-swapping network and India's Hero Corp is the world's largest motorcycle company. And now, the two have partnered which will help Hero MotorCorp accelerate its transition to electric two-wheelers. Hero MotorCorp has built over 100 million two-wheelers since its inception in the 1980s. It has projected that in the 2020s it will sell another 100 million two-wheelers. Gogoro is home to the world's leading battery swapping technology. In Taiwan alone, it has more than 2,000 battery swapping stations that service Gogoro's electric scooter range. A staggering 250,000 battery swaps occur every day.
At the 2021 carandbike awards, Hero Motorcorp chairman and CEO Pawan Munjal Conferred The Visioneer Award.
Gogoro will now be bringing its battery-swapping network to India while Hero will build a series of electric two-wheelers which will be based on Gogoro's platform.
Pawan Munjal who is the chairman and CEO of Hero Motorcorp is said to be in a hurry to make the transition to electric two-wheelers. "Oh, he's in a hurry," Gogoro's Jason Gordon told Electrek. "I believe his exact words were, 'I'm in a hurry!"
"No other place on Earth has more people moving around on fossil fuel-burning two-wheelers than India," Gogoro founder and CEO Horace Luke said in an interview with The Verge.
"They don't have a battery swapping infrastructure that has proven to be solid enough for India to transform and electrify their nation. I would never try to replicate that. It would kill me. I would be too old by the time I'd get even near that," We need to play to the strength of the partner locally and enable them through our technology to let them win and go faster," Horace Luke explained.
Hero has close to 50 per cent market share of the two-wheeler market in India so this will be a massive catalyst for the electrification of two-wheelers in the country.
"Today marks another major milestone in our journey, as we bring Hero's leadership in two-wheelers, our global scale and innovation powerhouse, with the leadership of Gogoro in the swapping business model, as they have demonstrated over the years in Taiwan and the rest of the world," Dr Munjal said in a press statement.
