Gogoro — Networks of electric scooters with swappable batteries

Great idea, Better Place (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bet...) tried to do something similar for cars but unfortunately went bust for a multitude of reasons. Maybe starting small with scooters could be the way to go.

Very cool to see other electric vehicles getting funded, but I think they'll run into issues of rider licensing. Scoot uses a loophole to get around this, but how many people do you know that have an M1 or M2 license?

It's also interesting to compare this to http://www.scootnetworks.com/ which has created a network of electric scooters that you rent by the hour in SF.

This company has raised $150 million? Seems like a big bet. Hope it pays off for them. I'm not a scooter rider, nor do I live in as urbanized a place as NYC, SF, etc. internationally to properly judge. That said, the go somewhere to charge up, or in this case switch out batteries, seems to ADD a pain point, rather than subtract - eg. charge at home. Not sure how this works without an charger system at home.

Very interested in trying it. Living in NY, Scootnetworks and Car2go seem like cheaper options to zip. Also, interesting to compare to the electric motorcycle market like Zero http://www.zeromotorcycles.com/