JAKARTA -- Ride-hailing company Gojek and Taiwan's Gogoro, a leading battery-swapping electric scooter maker, will launch a pilot program to test scooters with swappable batteries in Indonesia's capital, both companies announced on Tuesday.
The announcement comes on the back of an April pledge by Indonesia's Gojek to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2030.
The pilot program will begin in the next few months, initially in South Jakarta, with 250 Gogoro scooters and four battery-swapping stations. They plan to increase the number of scooters to 5,000 and add more stations in the future, both companies said in a statement.
The pilot program is part of a strategic partnership. Gogoro announced in September that it will list in the U.S. via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), and that GoTo, Gojek's parent, will be one of the investors participating in a private investment in public equity, or PIPE.
Under the pilot program, Gojek and Gogoro will lease the scooters to drivers at a fee that "will not be expensive for drivers," Raditya Wibowo, chief transport officer at Gojek, told Nikkei Asia. The rental fee will cover the costs of changing batteries at the stations and maintenance, he said.
"One of the reason[s] we want to do [electric scooters] is we want to reduce the cost for the drivers," Wibowo said. "The main costs [for drivers] are fuel, food and [mobile] data plan. We do a lot of things to help them with food and the data plan. We think the best way to help them with fuel costs is to go electric."
The pilot program will also help Gojek and Gogoro gauge whether the drivers like the scooters or not. The ride-hailing drivers "are the power user segment of the population. ...If we can make it work with them we can make it work for everyone in Indonesia," Wibowo added.
Under the 2030 net-zero pledge, Gojek is aiming to transform its fleet of 2 million four-wheelers and two-wheelers into electric vehicles in the same time frame.
Indonesia will mark Gogoro's third country it has entered, after China and India, said Horace Luke, the Taiwanese company's CEO. Not only is the Southeast Asian country one of the biggest two-wheel markets in the world, "Indonesia has a very young population...[who are] open-minded about change," said Luke, explaining the decision to enter the nation. He noted that Jakarta is one of the most polluted cities in the world, and "it was natural for us to tackle [the Indonesian market] with a partner like Gojek."
Gogoro is one of Taiwan's most valuable startups and counts the National Development Fund, a government funding vehicle, and Temasek, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, as investors. It is seen by some as the scooter version of U.S. electric vehicle maker Tesla. The company was a participant in a late-October meeting between Indonesia's Investment Coordinating Board and iPhone assembler Foxconn when they held talks over EV investments in Indonesia. Foxconn is one of the PIPE investors in Gogoro's SPAC deal.
Gojek and Gogoro's announcement comes as industries and countries around the globe look for ways to cut carbon emissions, as the United Nations COP26 climate conference kicked off in Scotland.
Indonesia had pledged in the 2015 Paris climate agreement to cut carbon emissions 29% by 2030 using its own resources, or 41% with international support.
The country accounted for 1.69% of global CO2 emissions in 2019, according to Our World in Data.