Scooters And One Wheels

Kwang Yang goals to extend e-scooter gross sales fivefold to 15,000 subsequent yr

  • By Lisa Wang / employee

Kwang Yang Motor Co (光 陽 工業) aims to increase sales of electric scooters fivefold thanks to the extension of a government subsidy for the purchase of electric scooters and a wider distribution from an estimated 3,000 units this year to 15,000 units next year.

Kwang Yang has sold gasoline powered scooters under the KYMCO brand for more than 50 years, while the company’s wholly owned Ionex Taiwan Co (台灣 光 捷) is responsible for building and selling Ionex branded electric scooters.

“The company was badly affected by the [COVID-19] Pandemic from April when we started deploying our distribution network. Sales of Ionex scooters began to pick up from the end of August. We believe growth will continue through December, ”said Johnson Lin (林振盛), chief marketing officer of Ionex Taiwan, on the sidelines of a press conference in the Sindian (新店) district of New Taipei City.

Photo: Amy Yang, Taipei Times

Ionex has a 5 percent market share and expects sales momentum to increase further over the next year as the sales network is set to grow from about 30 to 100 this year, Lin said.

Extending a government grant to buy electric scooters until next year is a major incentive for the industry, which is faced with high spending on battery development and the use of battery swap stations, he said.

The company has installed 709 battery swap stations so far and is well on its way to reaching 1,000 units by the end of the year, he said.

As of Tuesday, Ionex had sold 1,969 electric scooters that year, compared to 63,383 units from market leader Gogoro Inc (睿 能), government data showed.

Aeon Motor Co (宏 佳 騰) followed with 7,228 units, followed by China Motor Corp (中華 汽車) with 2,048 units, the data showed.

Gogoro operates more than 2,100 battery swap stations in the country and plans to add 583 battery swap points at CPC, Corp. Taiwan’s (中油) service stations by the end of this year.

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