How China is poised to dominate the ‘electric donkey’ industry

In many ways, the humble two-wheeler is the most successful electric vehicle China has ever rolled out on a scale that is truly mind-blowing.

More than 45 million are sold every year in China, Joseph Constanty, senior director of global strategy and growth at NIU, a Nasdaq-listed Chinese electric two-wheeler brand, told me. Nationwide, some 400 million electric two-wheelers — mostly mopeds — were zipping on the road at the end of 2023, according to state-run newswire Xinhua, compared to 20.4 million electric cars. In my hometown, Shanghai, the number of electric mopeds reached 10 million last year, meaning one in every 2.5 people owned one. The vast majority of these look like Vespas and are designed to travel no faster than 25 kilometers, or about 15 miles, an hour. Technically, they are classified as electric bicycles in China and, when fully charged, can cover 40-60 kilometers.

From daily commutes to school runs and everything in between, these mopeds — endearingly dubbed “little electric donkeys” — carry their owners everywhere. You can’t miss them: outside wet markets, metro stations, and shopping malls, filling the pavement to the brim while carrying personalized stickers to help their owners spot them.

During a recent visit home, I saw rows of them hooked up to communal charging pods inside residential estates and outside shops. Facilities like these — designed for safer charging — are cheap to use and easy to find.

China’s two-wheeler sector shares some characteristics with its four-wheelers, which are better understood — and more feared — in the West. Electric mopeds have benefitted from subsidies for consumers as well as China’s massive manufacturing capacity, and the companies that make them have been shaped by rapid expansion and brutal price wars, fostering a handful of well-known brands: Yadea, based in the eastern city of Wuxi and listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, sold 16.5 million electric two-wheelers last year, with revenues just shy of $5 billion.

And, much as the domestic Chinese market has become saturated with electric cars, prompting automakers to look abroad, two-wheeler manufacturers are following suit.

Yadea’s VP Zhou told 21st Century Business Herald that he expected Southeast Asia to be the largest export market for Chinese two-wheelers, followed by South America and Africa. In May, his company started building a $150 million factory in Indonesia, which is set to produce 3 million two-wheelers every year. It has also expanded into Vietnam. Some companies have ventured farther: NIU has targeted the European and US markets in addition to Southeast Asia, with Constanty telling me he did “not see major competition from non-Chinese manufacturers” in the West. Deloitte projects annual demand for electric two-wheelers outside China will jump from 21.1 million in 2022 to 46.3 million in 2026.

The US was the largest overseas market for Chinese two-wheeler makers last year, in part because e-bikes and their components were exempted from a list of Chinese products subject to a 25% tariff instituted by recently reelected US President Donald Trump, according to Shanghai-based consultancy iResearch. But the tariff exclusion ended in June, and the Biden administration has announced a 25% tariff on e-bike batteries starting in 2026.

Yet there are also unique factors that spurred the two-wheeler market. For one, motorcycles have been banned or heavily restricted in many parts of China since the turn of the century, largely due to road safety concerns. Around that time, major cities also started outlawing tens of millions of gasoline-fueled mopeds in an effort to tackle air pollution

Sales of electric mopeds boomed soon afterwards, with more than 32 million sold every year throughout the 2010s, according to Deloitte. Growth accelerated from 2019 after the central government revised safety requirements and handed out subsidies.

They are extremely affordable, too. At one store in north Shanghai, a candy-colored model produced by Aima, another popular brand, was being promoted at 2,399 yuan ($336), around 20% of what an average resident earns monthly in the city. “Most of the models we have are under 4,000 yuan ($560),” the store’s owner told me.

Despite their high hopes, Chinese companies will face challenges expanding into Southeast Asia. Indonesia, the world’s third-largest market for two wheelers after India and China, offers a good example.

Conversion to electric two-wheelers has been slow in the country of 284 million due to relatively high upfront costs and limited availability of charging stations. Conventional motorcycles also carry cultural and economic importance. Many Indonesians treat their two-wheelers as “one of their most-prized assets,” Aditya Hadiputra, principal at Jakarta-based venture capital firm MDI Ventures, told me.

Sitting on top of their “many concerns” to go electric is the brand, he told me. The country’s petrol-motorcycle market is dominated by Japanese firms such as Honda and Yamaha that have “spent years” building up their reputation, whereas their Chinese electric rivals are likely to be new brands that Indonesians have never heard of, Hadiputra said.

India — the world’s second-biggest two-wheeler market — already has leading homegrown brands such as Hero and Bajaj that make nearly all their components locally for petrol-fuelled motorbikes and scooters. For now, Indian firms making electric two-wheelers still depend on Chinese suppliers for the materials for batteries, said Charith Konda, a Hyderabad-based energy specialist with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. “By the end of this decade, we’ll be able to indigenise the EV supply chains completely, if not earlier,” he said.