Since its launch just over four years ago, Taiwan-based Gogoro has grown from 15 employees to more than 600 and raised US$180 million (S$252 million) in seed funding.

Its first consumer product — the electric-powered Smartscooter — made its debut in Taipei last July.

Within five months, more than 4,000 units of the sleek-looking machines were snapped up, as users took to Gogoro’s innovative idea that they can quickly swap used batteries for fully-charged ones at multiple kiosks across the city or tap into a network of other owners’ charging stations.

The Smartscooter is now poised to go global, hitting Europe and then the United States in the second half of this year.

… “Many Taiwanese think, in the past two decades, the government and decision-makers have spent time preserving their own interests and in fighting the ideological warfare, instead of sustaining the economy,” said Dr Lee Chia–yi, a Taiwanese assistant professor now teaching at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore.

… An export-led economy such as Taiwan has no choice but to be immersed in global trade, but its geopolitical ostracism is a key problem, observe analysts such as Dr Wu Shang-su, an RSIS research fellow who previously worked in Taiwan’s National Defense University and the Legislative Yuan.