Taiwan has the highest density of scooters in the world, apparently, and in March there will be a new innovative scooter in town. The Yamaha EMF - a fully electric scooter - is the result of a collaboration between the Japanese marque and GoGoro, an electric scooter manufacturer with a monstrous swappable battery network.
Powered by an electric motor with a 7.6 kW (10.2 bhp) motor, the Yamaha EMF is billed as the ultimate city scooter which is said to reach 30 mph in 3.5, have a top speed of around 60 mph, and weigh around 114 kg. But, importantly, the range per battery is yet to be confirmed.
Though, we suppose the range isn’t of concern (which is novel for an electric machine) as the key feature of this scooter is the utilisation of the Gogoro swappable battery network. Simply roll up, replace your battery with a fully charged one, and roll out.
“At the heart of Gogoro’s ecosystem is the Gogoro Network, a hyper-efficient battery swapping platform that was recognized in 2021 by Guidehouse Insights as the leading battery swapping company for lightweight urban vehicles in the world,” writes the company.
“With more than 450,000 riders and over 10,000 battery swapping GoStations at over 2,200 convenient locations, Gogoro Network is hosting 330,000 daily battery swaps with more than 250 million total battery swaps to date” - from the Yamaha press release.
Yamaha and GoGoro - an electric partnership?
Yamaha is widely known to be a member of the Electric Consortium with Honda, KTM and Piaggio whose chief goal is to provide interchangeable batteries across models. With this framework in place, a swappable battery network makes a lot of sense in mainland Europe.
This isn’t the first scooter born from the relationship between GoGoro and Yamaha either. The first was the EC-05 which was revealed back in 2019 - and as the electric charge marches on and the ‘big’ manufacturers start releasing their electric renditions on the roads (the most recent being the BMW CE 04 scooter), this revolution is beginning to bear fruit.
Swappable battery tech may be an obvious answer to a difficult question - how to rid the two-wheeled world of range anxiety - but will we ever see this network in Europe? And with it, will we see the Yamaha EMF in Europe?
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