Unlocking a Smartscooter using Apple Wallet

Summary

Gogoro, a Taiwanese company known for its two-wheeler battery-swapping technology, has integrated its Smartscooters with Apple Wallet. This integration allows users to unlock and start their scooters using a digital key on their iPhone or Apple Watch, enhancing convenience for both new and existing customers. The feature is available in over 300,000 existing Smartscooters in Taiwan equipped with NFC technology and will also be included in Gogoro's new scooter models. Additionally, users can share their scooter key with other iOS users and will soon be able to track their vehicles using Apple's Find My app.

Analysis

From Gogoro's point of view, this is a massive win. They have managed to use an existing smartphone capability to perform a key vehicle function.

From Apple’s point of view, this hopefully is a wake-up call. This could possibly be used by other e-bike and passenger car manufacturers. While some OEMs already use NFC tech to unlock the vehicle. They could possibly extend this to also be supported via the Apple Wallet.

Bikes getting stolen is still an issue. Making use of Apple's FindMy Network is a huge leverage. However, sharing of scooter keys through apps seems a bit risky. Apps do get hacked from time to time. But I believe that attack skill would be difficult to scale to a fleet of scooters.