How swappable batteries are helping Uber Eats deliver your food faster

Food delivery in crowded cities – or really any type of delivery – tends to work better on two wheels. Smaller vehicles just slip through densely packed streets more easily. Electric bikes and e-scooters have become the dominant form of food delivery in many cities and countries worldwide. Now, a new partnership between Uber Eats and Gogoro is helping make those deliveries even quicker and easier.

Gogoro is a leading provider of smart electric scooters and a swappable battery architecture that ensures scooters never have to stop and recharge.

The system has been rolled out in a number of countries, but nowhere is it more successful than in Taiwan. Thousands of battery swapping stations dot the country, performing hundreds of thousands of battery swaps each day. Over half a billion Gogoro battery swaps have already been performed, proving how effective the technology is for riders.

Today, Gogoro and Uber Eats Taiwan announced their Green Delivery Program to make it easier and more affordable for Uber Eats delivery partners to switch to electric scooters.

The two-year partnership will help Uber Eats riders receive discounts on new Gogoro Smartscooters and battery swapping programs and be given incentives for deliveries on Gogoro Smartscooters. Through the program, Uber Eats expects EV deliveries in Taiwan to double from nearly 20% to 40% of all trips by the end of 2025.

Without the need to stop and charge like most electric scooters, Gogoro’s electric scooters are ideal for delivery workers. In fact, a battery swap can take as little as six seconds. That’s even faster than a fuel fill-up in a combustion engine scooter.

Focusing on commercial riders helps increase the overall benefit of electric vehicles, as Gogoro founder and CEO Horace Luke explained:

“One of the greatest challenges of our time is transforming urban transportation to cleaner sustainable energy. Through this partnership in Taiwan, Gogoro and Uber are reducing the barriers for Uber Eats riders to embrace and adopt smart mobility in all of their deliveries. On average, last mile delivery riders ride more than six-times the distance as consumer riders, so enabling these delivery riders to adopt smart sustainable electric transportation can have an accelerated impact on a city.”

It’s a move that is fully embraced by Uber Eats Taiwan, as that company’s General Manager Chai Lee explained:

“Making it easy and affordable for delivery partners to switch to electric scooters is a top priority for Uber Eats in Taiwan. We have already seen how Uber Eats delivery partners have embraced Gogoro’s EV scooters and smart battery-swapping technology. Today’s agreement stands to supercharge this, bringing cleaner air to cities across Taiwan and helping us toward our goal of eliminating emissions on all global deliveries by 2040.”

Gogoro has a long history of partnering with commercial operators to help leapfrog its scooters and battery-swapping system into widespread use. Delivery riders have often been a key partner for that accelerated growth.