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Gogoro’s sleek electric scooters are now available to rent in Paris

Gogoro’s sleek electric scooters are now available to rent in Paris

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The Gogoro scooter-sharing service, Coup, has launched today in Paris. Announced back in May, 600 of the Taiwanese company’s slick electric scooters are now available for rent in and around the city’s center. The price has ticked up slightly from the original plan, though — it will cost €4 for the first 30 minutes of riding, and an additional €1 for every 10 minutes of riding after that.

Riders can download the Coup app (available on iOS and Android) to find and reserve one of the scooters. Basic insurance is baked into that cost, and riders only need a regular Class B car license (or an international driver’s license).

€4 for 30 minutes and no motorcycle license required

Gogoro has apparently found a decent amount of success with the scooter-sharing model. It launched the first effort with Coup (which is a subsidiary of parts supplier Bosch) in Berlin in 2016, but earlier this year it dramatically expanded the number of scooters available in that city to meet demand. It’s starting with three times as many in Paris, which is already a scooter-friendly city.

Gogoro first revealed its scooter at the beginning of 2015, and back then it wasn’t talking much about scooter sharing. Instead, the company was focused on sharing the (easily swappable) batteries that power the scooters. Gogoro planned to build battery-swapping stations in each new city, and so riders would buy the scooters outright and “rent” the batteries, almost like paying for gas.

That original model has actually worked out pretty well in the company’s home country of Taiwan, where Gogoro has installed more than 300 of these stations. But shifting to a whole scooter-sharing model has helped the company expand into new cities without needing to bother with building out nearly as much infrastructure.