Taiwan-based startup Gogoro re-imagines a cleaner and smarter electric scooter

I showed my friends here (Kaohsiung) the Gogoro scooter a few months ago, and they said they would never buy it. Their reasoning was exactly as the grandparent comment said: there are cheaper alternatives. They said it's also ingrained into the culture to go for the best deal even if something which costs slightly more is much better.

But even so, Apple is Apple, which has spent a lot of money into marketing/advertising their product and has a huge loyal following.

I too am interested in trying this out when I visit Taiwan next, but I just don't see a lot of people who want to line up and pay 2x the cost for an e-scooter. Also while their hardware/software integration are well beyond what gas scooters can do, but its look isn't that much better.

(Personally I am also wary of their vendor lock-in with the chargestations)

And that's basically the only point they raise on their advertisement webpage. They show you some of the special & cool features (suspension, drivetrain,...) but every single one is very propably too expensive and there are much cheaper components to aquire on the market. E.g. the water-cooled engine with planetary gear looks super expensive. They absolutely need massive economies of scale or they will fail. And I don't see the appeal of this scooter. There is no reason to pay double what a cheap one costs. I don't think you can compare an Apple phone with a scooter (style vs utility).