Final week, we reported on information of Gogoro’s founder and CEO, Horace Luke, resigning amid accusations of subsidy fraud by the corporate in its home market of Taiwan. Now we’ve realized that the Taiwanese authorities has concluded that there’s inadequate proof to help the claims of fraud in an investigation regarding an earlier case of misidentified non-domestic parts.
The problem centered round what Electrek has since found was a single part on only a portion of a single mannequin of electrical scooters produced by Gogoro. What was described by an insider as a “provide chain mistake” meant {that a} portion of the corporate’s VIVA mannequin electrical scooters used a single foreign-produced part.
An analogous case regarding a single part used on Gogoro’s JEGO mannequin electrical scooter led to claims of subsidy fraud final week, resulting from Gogoro having acquired giant authorities subsidies meant for firms that manufacture merchandise domestically in Taiwan. Nonetheless, as native media reported yesterday, the Ministry of Financial Affairs’ Industrial Improvement Administration introduced its evaluate outcomes, stating that there was “inadequate proof” to conclude that the reported Gogoro VIVA mannequin violated home manufacturing rules.
Gogoro has spent years as a rising star, evolving into the de facto commonplace for battery swapping with nicely over a million swappable batteries in circulation with a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of battery swaps since operations started. A number of hundred thousand batteries are swapped every day all through its giant community of customers.
Its iconic black and inexperienced battery packs are distributed round 1000’s of battery swap stations, every of which takes up lower than one automobile parking area however can service dozens of scooters practically concurrently. The most important swap stations can service a whole lot of electrical scooters.
Whereas Gogoro produces its personal electrical scooters, its battery design is open to different automobile makers, leading to main manufacturers like Yamaha and Aeon additionally producing electrical scooters that function with Gogoro’s battery commonplace.
The majority of Gogoro’s operations are in its home market of Taiwan, however the firm has expanded to a number of different nations, together with China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, the Philippines, Israel, Singapore, Chile, and Colombia.
Whereas the corporate’s operations have grown significantly, its battery-swapping mannequin has confirmed pricey to broaden. The corporate’s internet working losses have grown over the previous few quarters, and lots of have speculated that founder and CEO Horace Luke’s resignation had extra to do with the corporate’s monetary efficiency than the accusations of subsidy fraud.
The corporate is traded on the NASDAQ and has seen a gentle drop in share worth during the last two years, with the accusation of subsidy fraud final week inflicting one other steep drop in worth.
However hey, low inventory worth or not, my Gogoro scooter nonetheless works nice as my every day driver. The truth is, I simply swapped batteries this afternoon.
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