TAIPEI, Taiwan — Across Asia, motorized two-wheeled vehicles provide mobility for the masses, but emissions from hundreds of millions of scooters and motorcycles are responsible for more than half of traffic pollution in many cities, choking the air with hazardous levels of benzene and particulate matter, in addition to greenhouse gases.

This year, a Taiwan-based startup called Gogoro has been using the scooter-filled streets of Taipei to test its Smartscooter, an electric scooter with an efficient all-electric drive train, sleek design and Internet of Things ingenuity. But Gogoro doesn’t want to be called a scooter company. It sees itself as an energy services company at heart.

“What technology has done to content, it can also do to energy,” said Horace Luke, Gogoro’s chief executive. The company operates a 4G-connected network of 90 battery-swapping stations around metropolitan Taipei serving a fleet of 2,000-plus smartscooters that are challenging their gasoline-powered rivals in performance — zero to 30 in just over 4 seconds — convenience, and environmental impact.

The Smartscooter is quickly gaining market share. As of late November, Gogoro’s flagship vehicle accounted for 95 percent of Taipei’s electric vehicles and 5 percent of scooters overall, Mr. Luke said.

Gogoro scooters are powered by two lithium-ion batteries that use the same Panasonic cells as Tesla batteries, with one charge enabling travel of up to 60 miles. When it’s time to swap in fresh batteries, a smartphone app offers directions to the closest station with available batteries (one is a 7-eleven convenience store). In seconds, the user replaces used batteries — which send vehicle diagnostics to the Gogoro network via Bluetooth — with the newest and most-charged batteries at the station.

Panasonic has bought into Gogoro’s vision. In November, Gogoro announced that the Japanese company had joined the Taiwan government and the billionaire Samuel Yin as Series B, or second round, investors in Gogoro, making it the second electric vehicle maker to attract Panasonic capital, the other being Tesla. Shortly after raising $130 million in Series B funding, Gogoro announced that it would expand into Europe, beginning with Amsterdam.

“The fundamentals of how people live changed in a decade with the smartphone,” Mr. Luke said. “If we put the same effort into how energy is consumed, how much can we change things in 10 years?”

Mr. Luke speaks from experience. He was chief innovation officer at the Taiwan-based smartphone maker HTC from 2006 to 2011, helping transform the company from one that made products for other companies to a global brand. While at HTC, Mr. Luke and a colleague, Matt Taylor, began discussing their vision for a new company that would leverage technology for social impact. Being based in Taiwan — where 14 million scooters serve a population of 23 million — scooters seemed like a good place to start.

“The scooter hasn’t seen much evolution in the last 20 years,” Mr. Taylor said. “We asked ourselves if we could apply modern technology to something we see buzzing in the streets every day and make a better product in the process.”

In 2011, the two men co-founded Gogoro, with Taylor as chief technology officer. They decided to rebuild the scooter from the ground up. Their initial focus was on performance and innovation, but minimizing environmental impact quickly became important.

In Taiwan, pollution from scooter exhaust is a public health concern. Studies have found correlations between higher measurements of the fine particulate matter classified as PM2.5 in the air and increased cases of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in local hospitals.

During peak traffic hours, exhaust hangs heavy on the city’s scooter lanes, also affecting air quality for nearby pedestrians. The amount of pollutants found in emissions from a new gas scooter exceeds the pollution found in new car emissions by a factor of 100 to 1,000, said André Prév琀 of the Switzerland-based Paul Scherrer Institut. Scooters using two-stroke engines are the worst culprits, he said.

“The two-stroke engine scooter is the first vehicle to think about in terms of going all-electric, even before larger vehicles, because the pollution is much worse,” said Mr. Prév琀, who researched scooter emissions from 2010 through 2014. “It’s the logical next step in reducing traffic pollution in many Asian cities.”

The Taipei government agrees, and is actively promoting electric scooter purchases. The city’s Department of Environmental Protection offers replacement subsidies of around $45 for residents who retire their two-stroke scooters. A subsidy of up to $800 is available to those who replace their gas motorcycles with electric scooters. Gogoro Smartscooters currently cost between $2,200 and $2,375.

In Gogoro’s most recent round of funding, the government also invested $30 million via its Taiwan Development Fund. The company appeals to a government concerned by the vulnerability of its semiconductor industry, an economic pillar that faces increasing competition from China. “They see Gogoro as a huge opportunity for furthering the tech sector,” Mr. Luke said.

Taiwanese themselves have welcomed Gogoro. Elaine Kuan, a 29-year-old corporate accountant in Taipei, said she bought her Smartscooter in late July for its ease of riding and convenient technology, but also for its low environmental impact.

“I have asthma, so air pollution is a big deal to me,” Ms. Kuan said. “I hope that starting with myself I can slowly influence others and make the planet a place without vehicle emission pollution.”

Performance and convenience were the two main reasons Darren Liu, a 31-year-old pastry chef, bought his Smartscooter. “The riding experience and acceleration are much better than my previous gas-powered bike,” Mr. Liu said. “It’s the first electric scooter I’ve seen that can get up into the hills.” The battery swap model was also a big selling point. His previous experience using a relative’s electric scooter required hours of charging, compared with 30 seconds to swap his Gogoro batteries.

As it expands beyond greater Taipei to Taoyuan — where it is headquartered — and the tech hub Hsinchu, Gogoro is exploring the possibilities offered by a growing network of battery stations.

“At our core, we’re an energy company,” Mr. Taylor said. “Once the mix is actually working, it’s readily scalable.” The stations cost less than $10,000, have a small footprint and require only an outlet and Internet access, he said.

Mr. Luke said his company envisions an open system in which other companies develop products that can use Gogoro’s batteries.

Many companies — in fields as diverse as robotics, logistics and appliances — have inquired, he said. But he added that Gogoro’s longer-term vision was focused on “how to take energy and give it back to the grid when it needs it most.”

Gogoro’s entrance into the market this year comes as car companies including General Motors, Ford and Daimler-Benz are beginning to view themselves as service providers rather than manufacturers.

“There’s a transformation in the market where companies are being expected to expand into energy services,” said John Gartner of the consultancy Navigant Research. Companies that get involved in electric-powered mobility will naturally move toward stationary storage, he said.

“They’re looking to expand both markets by getting to economies of scale faster,” Mr. Gartner added.

Mr. Luke said that taking the scooter to Amsterdam in the first half of 2016 would provide a platform for demonstrating the role of Gogoro’s scooters and battery stations to new markets.

“If you think about smart cities in the world today, Amsterdam comes up in the top three, if not the top one,” he said. “We’ve seen a lot of success in Taipei. We’re taking that momentum and building on that to move into Europe quickly.”