Taiwan electric scooter production nearly doubles in 2018

Taipei, May 15 (CNA) Taiwan manufactured a record 91,000 electric scooters in 2018, almost double the number in 2017, the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) said Wednesday.

The output of the environmentally friendly scooters has been on the rise since 2014, when only 5,062 units were manufactured, and increased to 50,183 in 2017, according to MOEA data.

In 2018, production spiked by an annual 81.8 percent to 91,000, and by the end of the year, the total number of electric scooters on the road with new license plates was 82,483, an annual increase of 87 percent, the statistics showed.

The Taiwan government in 2016 began offering incentives for people to replace fuel-powered scooters with electric models, which helped push up the country's total scooter manufacturing figures to 1.1 million in 2017, but the number dropped in 2018 to 947,000, according to the MOEA data.

As of March this year, there were 13.85 million licensed scooters in Taiwan, which represented a 60 percent penetration rate in the country.