Electric scooter giant Gogoro cleared of fraud charges after investigation

Last week, we reported on news of Gogoro’s founder and CEO, Horace Luke, resigning amid accusations of subsidy fraud by the company in its domestic market of Taiwan. Now we’ve learned that the Taiwanese government has concluded that there is insufficient evidence to support the claims of fraud in an investigation relating to an earlier case of misidentified non-domestic components.

The issue centered around what Electrek has since discovered was a single component on just a portion of a single model of electric scooters produced by Gogoro. What was described by an insider as a “supply chain mistake” meant that a portion of the company’s VIVA model electric scooters used a single foreign-produced component.

A similar case relating to a single component used on Gogoro’s JEGO model electric scooter led to claims of subsidy fraud last week, due to Gogoro having received large government subsidies intended for companies that manufacture products domestically in Taiwan. However, as local media reported yesterday, the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Industrial Development Administration announced its review results, stating that there was “insufficient evidence” to conclude that the reported Gogoro VIVA model violated domestic production regulations.

Gogoro has spent years as a rising star, evolving into the de facto standard for battery swapping with well over one million swappable batteries in circulation with hundreds of millions of battery swaps since operations began. Several hundred thousand batteries are swapped daily throughout its large network of users.

Its iconic black and green battery packs are distributed around thousands of battery swap stations, each of which takes up less than one car parking space but can service dozens of scooters nearly simultaneously. The largest swap stations can service hundreds of electric scooters.

While Gogoro produces its own electric scooters, its battery design is open to other vehicle makers, resulting in major brands like Yamaha and Aeon also producing electric scooters that operate with Gogoro’s battery standard.

The bulk of Gogoro’s operations are in its domestic market of Taiwan, but the company has expanded to several other countries, including China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, the Philippines, Israel, Singapore, Chile, and Colombia.

While the company’s operations have grown considerably, its battery-swapping model has proven costly to expand. The company’s net operating losses have grown over the last few quarters, and many have speculated that founder and CEO Horace Luke’s resignation had more to do with the company’s financial performance than the accusations of subsidy fraud.

The company is traded on the NASDAQ and has seen a steady drop in share price over the last two years, with the accusation of subsidy fraud last week causing another steep drop in price.

But hey, low stock price or not, my Gogoro scooter still works great as my daily driver. In fact, I just swapped batteries this afternoon.