One thing I'm surprised about is the way Gogoro scooters are being rolled out and sold. The model 2 has a retail price of below $2,000 and is pretty much ideal

One thing I'm surprised about is the way Gogoro scooters are being rolled out and sold. The model 2 has a retail price of below $2,000 and is pretty much ideal as a city commute scooter. But they're not selling them for individual use, only in cities where they have their battery exchange charger stations set up. So I have to wonder: what kind of loss-leader is the cheap gogoro 2 scooter? Because I guarantee I would buy one (and a charging station that let me trickle-charge one set of batteries while I ride around on the other) if they were for sale. I have a 10 year old vespa that I love, but is starting to get long enough in the tooth that I'm considering a replacement. But they're not going to be sold in san francisco (or pretty much anywhere else in the US unless you're really optimistic), because they want to have a citywide network of single-use battery exchange stations. By single-use, I mean: only good for this one product. With gasoline, you can fuel anything, but they are basically angling for a whole-city distribution of a single thing: battery packs just for a scooter. This strikes me as a pretty bad model, which circles me back to the start. I wonder how much the scooter actually costs, if they're willing to leave this much market on the table for individual bike / charger sales. I suppose it could also be NTSB certification holding them up too. https://www.gogoro.com/ https://www.gogoro.com/