Beyond personal vehicles: How electrifying scooters will help achieve climate mitigation goals in Taiwan

Abstract

Electrification is considered a key enabler for decarbonizing road transportation. Recently, increasing attention has been directed to the deployment of electric two-wheelers in cities across the globe. However, climate change mitigation potential across the diversity of today's available scooter models is still missing in the existing literature. With a focus on Taiwan—the world's highest density of scooters—we comprehensively examine the performances of 156 scooter models on the market to understand the potential cost and carbon trade-offs among two-wheeler purchase options. We find that such a trade-off does exist when choosing scooters with different powertrain technologies. Compared to gasoline scooters, low-carbon-emitting electric scooters are more costly to own but not necessarily more expensive to purchase—because battery-swapping techniques convert the capital cost of the battery itself into an operating expense. Surprisingly, all the Phase 7 emissions standard internal combustion engine scooters appear to meet the near-term climate goal for 2030 in Taiwan, providing a less-costly transition from liquid fuels to electrification. While all the e-scooters supplied with the current electric power meet the 2040 emissions reduction target, deep decarbonization of electricity generation is also required, along with a large-scale adoption (at least 90%) of electric scooters to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.