Mr. Dong Jinggui and Ms. Qian Jinghong should be the power couple of the electric two-wheeler industry. Together, as the Chairman and CEO, respectively, of the group, they own 62.96% of Yadea, the world’s biggest (by sales numbers) producer of electric two-wheelers.
The group is huge and the market leader by far in the global E2W industry. However, just saying that it is the market leader does not correctly indicate the magnitude of its lead. Let’s say, Yadea is bigger than the next twenty electric two-wheeler brands combined. It makes electric two-wheelers, including scooters, motorcycles, electric three-wheelers, three-wheeled microcars, kick scooters, and electric bicycles.
And yet, Dong Jinggui and Qian Jinghong are hardly known outside China.
That may be because till last year (2024), more than 95% of Yadea’s revenues came from Mainland China. That is a trend that is unlikely to change in the near future, even as the company goes on an aggressive expansion and product spree in the international markets. Yadea would remain predominantly Chinese even though it is aggressively opening international frontiers.
The reason is the utter and complete domination of China in the global E2W industry. In 2024, the Chinese industry accounted for nearly 6.0 million electric two-wheelers. This number excludes electric bicycles and any pedal-assist two-wheelers. This is roughly 60% of the global electric two-wheeler market. In comparison, the next biggest market – India – sat at around 1.2 million units.
Yadea: The Numerical Strength
What makes Yadea’s domination even more mind-boggling is that 2024 was not even the best year for the company. That was way back in 2021, the pre-COVID era, when the company’s sales had topped 6.1 million units.
In the same year, Yadea had sold 5.6 million electric bikes. Since then, scooter sales have come down steadily to 3.93 million units, while electric bike sales hit a peak of 11.6 million units in 2023 before settling down at 9.07 million units in 2024. This reflects a changing trend in China (and the rest of the world), where electric bikes are aggressively eating into electric scooter sales.
So while 2024 may have been disappointing for Yadea, it is still sitting comfortably as the market leader.
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At 3.9 million units, Yadea soars above everyone else.
That numerical strength of sales numbers, in turn, translates into unparalleled revenue and profits. The revenue in 2024 was RMB 28.24 billion (USD 3.95 billion).
That was a sharp 18.7% decline from 2023 revenues of RMB 34.76 billion (USD 4.87 billion), but nevertheless significantly higher than most other pure-play electric two-wheeler manufacturers globally.
The same goes for net profits. Yadea and the other Chinese are the only participants making money in the business today.
Why are the Chinese Way Ahead?
Long before the global industry could learn to walk, the Chinese were already running. Bouyed by their incentives-driven domestic consumption, they built an edge: Scale. The leading Chinese manufacturers and their supplier ecosystem have an unprecedented scale that the rest of the globe cannot match in the foreseeable future. The edge is not just limited to scooters; it extends to components – from cells, packs, motors, to even aluminium castings, brakes, and wheels. Literally everything is significantly cheaper in China, and that translates into BoM costs that cannot be challenged.
That scale translates into the Chinese becoming the default suppliers whenever any country plans to go mass-mobility-electric, spreading products worldwide and increasing the scale even further. It helps that they are the most agile and aggressive, entering markets and opening opportunities before the world has woken up to them. This is the most visible in Africa, where multiple Chinese factories have opened up the market even before the rest of the world could take notice.
What has also worked for the Chinese is that they do not worry too much about IPs. Not only are they ‘flexible’ in taking ‘inspiration’ from everything that the world loves (cue the 150 Vespa copies that China produces), they are also quite okay with copying each other. So you can get similar-looking scooters from Sunra, AIMA, Luyuan, TailG, Yadea, or one of the new entrants. This makes life easier for any white-labeler selling scooters in their native markets and wants to change factories mid-way.
Being a factory for the world has also kept Yadea and its homegrown competitors grounded and focused. They could pursue scale with a single-minded focus
Luyuan and AIMA: The Worthy Competitors
While Yadea is the undisputed leader in unit sales, it lags behind Luyuan in revenues. While we would hardly ever find a Luyuan brand scooter on the road, the group is huge. They have made a business out of selling electric bikes and scooters to fleet operators and anyone who wants to start a white labeled two-wheeler business. From ASEAN to Europe, and even in closed markets like India, there are Luyuan scooters on the road. We just don’t recognise them.
For the last reported year (2024), Luyuan reported revenues of USD 5.1 billion, compared to Yadea’s USD 3.93 billion. While unit sales data is not available for Luyuan, a key differentiator between the two is that Yadea sells most of its vehicles within China. We estimate that the best-selling scooters go for less than RMB 4,500 (USD 630). Earlier, Yadea was content being the factory to the world, but we have increasingly seen it pushing its own brand name, company-owned showrooms, and outside China production bases.
In comparison, Luyuan sells in international markets, most often not under its own brand name, and manages to realise greater revenue per unit.
AIMA is not too different either. A healthy share of its sales comes from international markets as a supplier of white-labeled electric mopeds and electric bikes. While net sales were at USD 3.18 billion, behind Luyuan and Yadea, AIMA managed to earn USD 278.3 million in net profits last year, beating both its countrymates.
The Changing Shape of Yadea
For long, Yadea was like every other Chinese ‘factory-to-the-world’ manufacturer. It would offer ultra-cheap, barely passable quality mopeds to anyone who wanted to put their own badge and sell them in their local markets.
However, Niu happened.
The startup from China emerged on the scene about a decade back. Founded by Baidu’s former CTO, Niu took electric mopeds a few steps ahead in terms of reliability, tech, and quality. The quality bit mattered, as while the Chinese were always okay to supply as many electric mopeds as you may want to buy at very low prices, the quality used to be questionable. Niu changed that. It also pushed its brand even when targeting fleet sales.
The brand took off, soon replacing European OEMs like Govecs, Askoll, Torrot, and Unu in ride-sharing moped markets across Europe and later on becoming very successful as a retail brand. Others like Vmoto followed, albeit on a smaller scale.
Yadea saw that and they fine-tuned their strategy. Buoyed by the warm reception to quality Chinese brands like Niu, large white-label manufacturers such as Yadea started building products with export markets in focus. This process started 6-7 years ago, and Yadea’s first step towards this was to engage with KISKA design. KISKA is responsible for KTMs, has a hand in CF Moto, and has also done work for India-based Bajaj Auto. Amongst recent entrants, India-Africa-based Zeno Moto has used the Austria-based design house for the design of the Emara motorcycle.
KISKA designed the Yadea C1S scooter, a scooter Yadea said was designed for the European market. It didn’t really bring in big sales numbers, but the C1S did bring a fresh design language to Yadea. Since then, KISKA has worked on at least two more projects for Yadea, including the Kemper performance motorcycle.
Focusing on the Brand is the New Chinese Thing
Yadea is not the only one focusing on its brand in recent times. Luyuan, AIMA, TailG, and Sunra have been doing the same. At the core, this has translated into better quality levels, much welcome. At the more perfunctory level, this translates into tail-lamps shaped like the company’s logo.
The Chinese Market is Different
Mind you, the above-mentioned six million number is quite fuzzy. The Chinese classify electric two-wheelers under three different categories. The first category is electric bicycles: anything that is pedal-assisted. The big criterion here is that the top speed is limited to 25 kph, and the weight is restricted to 55 kg.
Now, some of them, like the fast-selling Yadea Trooper (below), may appear like regular fat tire electric bikes.
Others, like the Honda DAX e: (below), may appear more like regular scooters/mopeds.
The second category is the electric moped. These are vehicles with speeds above 26 kph and under 50 kph. Most of Yadea’s sales in China are in this segment. It is a segment made popular because of relaxed licensing norms in some provinces. Many manufacturers have also been offering pedals as a backup in this segment.
Then there is the electric motorcycle segment, essentially everything that is above 50 kph and with no restrictions on weight or motor power.
The moped segment works very well in China. At a top speed of nearly 50 kph. These runabouts can get the job done for individual transport in large, populated cities. Their limited capability and the compact, often single rider design also make them competitively priced. Most of Yadea’s scooter sales are in this segment. Many of them sell at about RMB 4000 (est USD 560).
Quest for International Expansion
While Yadea stays dependent on the Chinese market, and the Indian market remains a difficult direct entry, the company is focused on entering other international markets that may become significant in the future. Yadea already has manufacturing capacity in Indonesia and Vietnam, the two most important markets in ASEAN. In Thailand, Yadea has opened multiple retail outlets.
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Apart from these, Brazil and Mexico are the new markets where Yadea has set up assembly plants.
On the retail front, Yadea has been pushing its brand in Europe aggressively. In recent years, the brand’s showcasing at EICMA has been comprehensive, occupying considerable floor space. It has opened a flagship store in Paris to enter the European market.
Focus on Technology
Like any Chinese manufacturer, Yadea has been quick to get new tech to market. In some ways, the company follows the set mindset of every Chinese manufacturer, like hub motors in every scooter. In other ways, Yadea has been working on new things and staying ahead of the curve, again using scale to its advantage.
Amongst recent things has been the Sodium-ion battery tech that Yadea announced in January 2025, and even unveiled a couple of models that would carry the tech to market.
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Sodium has many benefits. It is widely available and can also be extracted from common salt, which the sea has in abundant quantities. Extracting sodium is cheaper and cleaner. As a result, Na-ion packs are cheaper.
But that is where the positives end and the challenges start. While Na-ion batteries may work like Li-ion batteries, Na is more than three times heavier than Li. The ions have greater momentum when moving between the cathode and anode, which causes greater mechanical stress on the cathode and anode. As a result, Na-ion batteries have a shorter lifecycle than Li-ion batteries. Yadea puts the lifecycle at 1500 charge cycles for its newly launched batteries. This is not bad and puts it on par with NMC Li-ion batteries from about two years ago. In comparison, in some cases, the Li-ion LFP chemistry already achieves 6000 charge cycles.
The other problem is the cell voltage. Sodium ions have a lower standard reduction potential and a lower tendency to gain electrons, which limits the maximum voltage to around 70% of that of a Li-ion battery.
This compounds the shortcomings—more weight, less energy-carrying capacity, or lower energy density. As a result, Sodium-ion batteries have been limited to stationary applications till now.
Yadea circumvents these challenges by offering the Na-ion option only in low-speed yet full-size moped models. These vehicles (Q1, DE3, G30, and Guanneng Q50) have 400W-600W motor power and top speeds in the 25-30kph range. Notably, their rated payload is 75kg, making them solo-rider vehicles, even though the images show a small auxiliary passenger seat for carrying kids. All are priced between USD 450 – 590 and are Chinese market-only vehicles.
The Future?
Yadea has a huge home market advantage, accounting for more than 50% of the electric two-wheeler market. Globally, it sells more electric two-wheelers than anyone, by a huge margin. The brand has spent the last 4-5 years investing in new product development tailored for the Western markets. With products like the Kemper, Keenness, Voltguard, and Fierider, the brand. is targeting international markets. It may take a long time for international markets to make a meaningful impact on Yadea’s numbers, but being ahead of everyone in opening markets, it is on to something.
