Trend of Net Zero Carbon Emissions Facilitates the Upgrade and Transformation of Traditional Motorcycle Shops

As countries around the world make commitments to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, the electrification of vehicles is viewed as a useful approach to this ambition and thus becomes a trend. The motorcycle manufacturers in Taiwan are also taking action to keep up with this trend. At the end of September 2021, the number of electric motorcycles has reached around 510,000 units, accounting for 3.59% of all registered motorcycles.

It is expected that, starting with 2025, the growing market share of electric motorcycles will gradually change Taiwan’s motorcycle industry structure. Although the increase of electric motorcycles does not impact the maintenance market immediately, it will create enormous demand for maintenance and repair in the long run. Traditional motorcycle shops are now facing the urgent need to transition and adjust to the new technology. However, there is still a number of motorcycle shops lacking in the technology required to maintain the new fuel-injected engines due to the insufficiency of current reskilling system. In the future, the conventional scooter mechanics may encounter the risk of being jobless. Over a half of traditional motorcycle shops are individually-owned and small-sized businesses incapable of implementing digital application and service innovation. Subject to the impacts of electric motorcycles, these shops are very likely to face the crisis of decreased revenue. Thus, most of the second-generation owners who take over family business plan to improve their store layout and service quality.

To support the remaining 20,000 traditional motorcycle shops to upgrade and transform, in 2019, the Taiwan government integrated the resources of Ministry of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Labor and Environmental Protection Administration to launch “The Support of Upgrading and Transforming Motorcycle Shops” program. Besides cooperating with motorcycle manufacturers to provide training courses, the government also offers low-interest loans for equipment upgrades and introduces cross-industry service models to promote service optimization and intelligent marketing. By doing so, the government provides conventional scooter mechanics with the access to the information about the latest industrial development and business management and thus enhance their professional capability.

On the other hand, traditional motorcycle shops have been selling products and providing maintenance and repair services directly to their customers. However, over the past two years, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, human contact has become a dangerous thing. This caused severe impacts on traditional motorcycle shops and made them suffer significant revenue losses. For them, how to provide services in a contactless way becomes a critical issue. To address this problem, the government introduces an e-learning system to enhance the motorcycle mechanics’ capacity to apply digital tools. By means of online-to-offline commerce, traditional motorcycle shops could minimize the frequency of their direct contact with customers.

Since “The Support of Upgrading and Transforming Motorcycle Shops” program launched, 4318 motorcycle shops have been facilitated, and for those second-generation shop owners, who especially give highly positive feedback on the program. With the government’s help, the motorcycle industry is expected to be popularized in younger generation, provide diverse services and promote digitalization, thus create a new technology era.

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