Last month I was fortunate enough to take a trip to China and visit seven different micromobility companies, each of which invited me to tour their factory, test out their new products, or attend their major events. The trip is something of a sequel to the first Chinese factory tour trip I took last year (with the documentary of that trip racking up millions of views on YouTube).

In the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing detailed articles and videos about each of the following visits. But in the meantime, consider this as a preview of what’s to come.

Bafang factory tour

Bafang is perhaps the best known Chinese electric bicycle component manufacturer. The company is widely regarded for its motors, which have been its flagship products for over a decade. Everyone in the e-bike industry knows that if you want a solid motor (and don’t want to pay for a German motor), you go to Bafang.

But as it turns out, Bafang makes pretty much everything else on an e-bike too, now even including the batteries.

Long-time followers of my articles and videos might remember that I actually took a tour of Bafang’s factory all the way back in 2019. The company has since expanded to a much larger factory and the production processes have also improved. That was a particularly fascinating element of my visit, having the chance to see just how much has changed in the last five years.

For example, automation has helped replace many of the jobs previously done by hand in the manufacturing and assembly lines for components like motors and controllers. However, the working environment has improved considerably for certain tasks like fine soldering that are still done by highly trained hands. The older fume hoods that once hung over workstations in order to filter out soldering exhaust have now been moved into the work surfaces, meaning that instead of soldering fumes rising up past the nose of the worker on the way to vents, the gases are now sucked downwards and out to the filters. What was once a solution to protect everyone except for the immediate worker is now a solution to protect everyone.

The battery factory was another interesting part of the visit, as batteries are one of the newest components added to Bafang’s quickly expanding lineup.

The process is highly automized. First, individual battery cells are sorted by machines into the most similar resistances, then grouped into modules that are ultrasonically welded together. Human hands return to the equation with the assembly of the battery modules into the cases, and then the batteries are sent for inspection at the end of the assembly line.

Before the batteries can be packaged for shipment though, every single pack is put through a charge and discharge cycle to test for anomalies. Massive racks run down the hallways with hundreds of batteries at a time undergoing testing.

Other new innovations that Bafang has begun integrating into its product lines are its own internally geared hubs with automatic transmissions as well as hub motors with built-in transmissions. One problem that has plagued the e-bike industry is the use of existing transmission components that were not intended for high-power motors but rather human leg power. With Bafang developing its own bicycle transmissions that are designed to work with higher continuous power found in electric bikes, reliability should see a significant improvement.

There’s a lot more where that came from though, so make sure you stay tuned for my full report from the factory, coming soon!

NIU Factory Tour

I’ve ridden a NIU electric moped since 2020 and have long been a fan of the brand, which is known as a leading electric smart scooter brand. The company’s designs have often been imitated, but there’s no substitute for the real thing, especially as NIU has rapidly expanded its wide range of offerings.

My tour started in the factory showroom, which underscores just how wide that product line truly is. We’re used to seeing the company’s export products, but there’s an even more diverse lineup of domestic electric two-wheelers designed for the Chinese market.

From there, we moved to the factory floor where scooters are assembled. Flying conveyor systems with hanging component shelves are pre-loaded with all the parts necessary for building these scooters, allowing line workers to pluck off the necessary components as they float by at each stage of the assembly process.

The scooters go together surprisingly quickly as they move down the line, with test riders waiting for them to roll off the final ramp. After the scooters are inspected and test-ridden, they’re eventually moved into a massive storage warehouse and loaded onto trucks for shipping all over the country and export to international dealers.

In another part of the factory I saw the standing electric scooters undergoing similar processes, with an assembly line conveying the scooters along as workers assembling them ahead of extensive rider inspections and test rides.

I also had the chance to test ride several of NIU’s electric vehicles, from the standing electric kickscooters to their higher speed mopeds and full-size electric motorcycles, to even the company’s Sur Ron-competitor electric dirt bike.

That bike, the street-legal NIU XQi3, was impressively powerful, and I had to be careful to keep the front wheel down when rolling off the line.

I’ll still always be partial to the company’s mopeds though, or “seated electric scooters” depending on how true to the term moped you’d like to be. As much fun as electric motorcycles and dirt bikes can be, there’s something so utilitarian about a seated electric scooter that makes it the perfect car replacement for me.

EUNORAU Headquarters Tour

I’ve been riding EUNORAU electric bikes for years and years, but this was my first chance to finally meet the team behind the bikes. I visited their headquarters near Hangzhou and took a tour through many of the company’s past, present and future e-bikes, including models still in the works.

From there, I visited their operations center where the company has a large warehouse stocked with just about everything you could ever need to service and support e-bikes. In addition to EUNORAU’s Las Vegas service center, the company is ready to ship out parts from its headquarters when necessary.

I even got a look behind the curtain at the company’s new BKRE service, which is more important than ever with the increasing number of e-bike company closures. Basically, BKRE stocks many of the parts used in common electric bikes from companies that have folded. That means owners of those e-bikes will have somewhere to turn in the future if they need support. Trying to find a random controller or display can be nearly impossible without knowing the actual factories those parts come from. With its deep network of connections in the e-bike manufacturing industry, EUNORAU can find replacement parts for nearly any electric bike made in China.

They stock many of those parts already on several rows of shelves in their warehouse. For parts they don’t already have on hand, owners can contact BKRE and with any luck, the right part can be found in a few days and sent out anywhere in the world.

Last but not least, I wasn’t about to leave without the chance to ride a bunch of EUNORAU’s electric bikes.

I had everything from the new version of the company’s fat tire electric trike to triple-battery electric bikes to four-wheeled electric quad bikes at my disposal.

I zipped around the area of the city they were located in on several of the company’s e-bikes, testing out the new components and improvements that have come from listening to the feedback of thousands of customers.

There’s a lot more to come though, so be on the lookout for my deep dive article and video on the experience!

Yadea Retail Dealer Show

This was absolutely wild! The last time I was in China, I visited one of Yadea’s massive factories. Yadea is the world’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer. They make everything from light electric scooters for recreation and commuting to heavy-duty electric trikes for commercial use. But their main products are seated electric scooters, of which they produce millions.

This time, Yadea invited me to attend the company’s Retail Dealer Show. There were over 4,000 dealers there, mostly from China but also from all around the world. The show was absolutely massive!

In addition to the huge attendance, Yadea had examples of many of the various models of electric vehicles they produce. I saw some familiar models but also experienced dozens of models I’d never seen before.

From Sur Ron-style electric dirt bikes to Vespa-style vintage-looking electric seated scooters, Yadea had it all there. I even checked out the company’s new sodium-ion batteries and fast charging technology, which could be a huge game changer for longer-lasting, safer batteries.

The sheer variety seen at the show was mind-blowing. I’ve covered electric vehicle companies for years, attended dozens of trade shows, and test-ridden literally hundreds of vehicles. But I’ve never seen a single manufacturer with such a breadth of vehicles as this.

Dahon Headquarters Visit

Dahon wasn’t the first to invent a folding bicycle, but the company was one of the earliest to popularize them with commercialized models. The company’s first folding bikes, released in 1984, are still highly sought after, and surviving examples carry high prices on the resale market. More recently, Dahon has expanded its wide line of folding bicycles to include many different types of folding electric bikes.

I toured Dahon’s showroom to see many of the soon-to-be-released models that will land in dealerships later this Spring. Talking to the team, I learned more about what makes Dahon’s folding e-bikes so special, including a focus on frame rigidity that helps reduce that telltale flexy feeling on many folding bikes in the market.

After checking out the new lineup of Dahon folding e-bikes in the showroom, I headed outside to experience them firsthand. From ultra-lightweight e-bikes to a new electric gravel e-bike and even a heavy-duty electric tricycle for carrying cargo and kids, the Dahon models were a blast to ride.

Finishing up the visit, the team took me on an evening group ride that they enjoy several times a month as a chance for the group to spend time riding together on the nice bicycle trails around Shenzhen.

Zhenmin golf cart factory tour

Zhenmin gave me access to their entire factory to see how electric golf carts and neighborhood electric vehicles are produced. The company builds a wide range of models and starts from the ground up, welding frames and fabricating bodies right there in the factory.

The process is largely manual, with workers hand-forming and welding the various components.

Many of the company’s models are exported to India, while others are sold in various countries in Asia and South America.

The warehouse for completed golf carts waiting to ship out was massive, with hundreds if not thousands of units waiting in various packaging stages for their journeys.

As with many of my other visits, I was happy to take the opportunity for some test rides. I started with a lifted electric golf cart built for a US-based company (though I had to cover the brand’s logos). I can’t tell you which one, but I’ll be excited to see them bring this beast of a golf cart to market. It’s incredibly powerful, to the point that I almost threw myself out the side of it on a sharp turn.

I also tried smaller and less beast-like machines, including those designed for elderly riders. They were fun in their own way, and there’s something nice about not having centrifugal forces fighting over your limbs. There’s definitely still a place in the market for modest neighborhood electric vehicles!

Heybike Alpha test ride

Also in Shenzhen, I had the opportunity to visit Heybike’s new headquarters. The company recently moved into a new Shenzhen office, and their team is obviously quite happy about all the extra space. There wasn’t too much to see inside yet, so instead we spent most of the visit testing out the company’s new Heybike Alpha electric bike.

It was just unveiled at CES and is the brand’s first mid-drive electric bike. The powerful motor proved to be incredibly torquey, helping me climb up both dirt and concrete hills with ease. I could even climb stairs on the bike!

The fat tires make quick work of both on-road and off-road surfaces, and mid-drive motor with included torque sensor is a joy to use. However, you definitely need to be careful with it because the extreme torque of the motor requires some care when shifting to go easy on that drivetrain.

We don’t know the final price of the Heybike Alpha at the time of writing, but it is expected to be one of the most affordable mid-drive electric adventure bikes on the market, helping to continue Heybike’s strategy of value pricing on the company’s existing line of diverse styles of electric bikes.

I’ve already shared my test riding video on that bike, so make sure you check it out here!

Stay tuned for more!

Make sure you check back over the next month or so as I release a dedicated article and video on each of these visits.

The trip was an eye-opening experience, and I hope to give you all that same feeling of going behind the curtain to see what goes into these vehicles that we so commonly use each day!