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 discovered that the Taiwanese authorities has concluded that there’s inadequate proof to help the claims of fraud in an investigation referring to an earlier case of misidentified non-domestic elements.
The difficulty 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 referring to a single part used on Gogoro’s JEGO mannequin electrical scooter led to claims of subsidy fraud final week, attributable to Gogoro having acquired giant authorities subsidies supposed for corporations that manufacture merchandise domestically in Taiwan. Nonetheless, as native media reported yesterday, the Ministry of Financial Affairs’ Industrial Growth 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 customary for battery swapping with nicely over a million swappable batteries in circulation with a whole bunch of tens of millions of battery swaps since operations started. A number of hundred thousand batteries are swapped each 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 house however can service dozens of scooters almost concurrently. The biggest swap stations can service a whole bunch 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 customary.
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 expensive to develop. The corporate’s web working losses have grown over the previous few quarters, and plenty 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 gradual 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 each day driver. In truth, I simply swapped batteries this afternoon.
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