E-Bike Manufacturers

Who builds it

A Few Factories Behind Hundreds of Brands

Most e-bike brands do not own a factory. They buy finished bikes from contract makers in Taiwan and China, or from a catalog of frames, motors and batteries those makers already build, and sell them under their own name.

The model works at two levels. Direct-to-consumer brands selling hub-drive bikes online often order a factory's existing design and change the paint, decals, display and accessories; the same frame can appear under several brand names, and a new brand needs little more than a purchase order and a marketing plan. Premium brands such as Trek, Specialized and Riese & Müller design and test their own frames, but most still have them built by the Taiwan cluster or in China.

Three bottlenecks sit under every brand: the assembly plants listed below, a short list of drive makers, Bosch, Shimano, Yamaha, Bafang and Ananda among them, and the cell makers that supply the battery packs. A brand page on EbikesX links to its drive system and, where a source names it, to the factory that builds it. See Drive Systems and Batteries & Safety.

Public sources rarely name the plant behind a brand. Brands treat their suppliers as confidential, and many US direct-to-consumer brands, including Lectric, Rad Power Bikes, Himiway and Super73, do not disclose where their bikes are built. Aventon is an exception: its bikes come from the Zhejiang Jiahong plant in Jinyun County, Zhejiang.

The Taiwan cluster

Giant and Merida Build for Much of the Premium Market

Taiwan's bicycle industry is centered on Taichung and Changhua, where Giant and Merida have their headquarters plants and dozens of frame, component and assembly suppliers sit within an hour's drive.

Giant Manufacturing, headquartered in Dajia, Taichung, is the largest bicycle maker in the world. It runs nine production sites, including plants in Kunshan and Chengdu in China, Lelystad in the Netherlands, Gyongyos in Hungary and Binh Duong in Vietnam, and it builds for other brands as well as its own: contract (OEM) work rose to 33% of Giant's revenue in 2025, up from 26%. In September 2025 US Customs and Border Protection issued a withhold release order on Giant's Taiwan-made bicycles over forced-labor indicators; bikes from its other plants appear unaffected.

Merida Industry, based in Yuanlin, Changhua, holds a 35% stake in Specialized and builds much of its output. Merida's Shenzhen plant built about 70% of its production for Specialized in 2021. Merida also assembles e-bikes in Hildburghausen, Germany, through Merida and Centurion Germany.

Around them sit smaller contract makers. Ideal Bike in Taichung builds for Fuji, SE and Tuesday; Pacific Cycles in Taoyuan builds Birdy, and its 2012 customer list included Niner, Orbea, Diamondback and Evil; Ming Cycle builds for YT Industries; and Darfon, through BESV and TD Hitech Energy, builds e-bikes and battery packs, including packs for Stromer and Shimano. Taiwan exported e-bikes worth US$668 million in 2025; the average export price was US$1,961 in the first seven months of the year.

China export clusters

Tianjin, Jiangsu-Zhejiang and Shenzhen Supply the Volume

China made about 110.8 million bicycles in 2025 and exported more than 26.7 million electric two-wheelers, worth about US$6.83 billion. Three regions do most of the work.

Tianjin is China's largest bicycle production and export base, with about half of the country's bicycle and e-bike output and more than 1,000 vehicle and parts makers. Fuji-ta in Jinghai builds for Decathlon, Scott, Cycleurope, Specialized and Samchuly; Golden Wheel Group, J&G and Dagold, which builds for Dahon, export bicycles and e-bikes worldwide. Bafang runs a motor plant in Tianjin, and Aima and Tailg have bases there.

Jiangsu and Zhejiang hold the drive and battery supply chain and the scooter makers. Bafang's headquarters plant and its battery plant are in Suzhou; Bafang made about 1.07 million hub motors, 179,081 mid-drive motors and 2.51 million integrated wheel motors in 2025. Ananda builds about 10 million e-bike motors a year across five factories, about 1 million of them in Wuxi. Phylion in Suzhou supplies light electric vehicle battery packs. Segway-Ninebot and NIU build scooters and mopeds in Changzhou; Ninebot sold 4.1 million electric two-wheelers in 2025 and NIU 1.2 million.

Shenzhen and Dongguan in Guangdong host direct-to-consumer brands with their own plants, such as Engwe, and battery makers such as Greenway Technology, with 6.5 GWh of capacity a year. Merida's Shenzhen plant and Ideal Bike's Dongguan plant also sit in this cluster.

Yadea, Aima and Tailg

China's Two-Wheeler Giants Build for Themselves

Yadea, Aima and Tailg build mostly under their own brands for China's domestic market, the largest e-bike market in the world, where about 380 million e-bikes are registered.

Yadea, headquartered in Wuxi, sold about 16.3 million electric two-wheelers in 2025, including 11.45 million e-bikes and 4.82 million electric scooters, plus 18.3 million batteries. It states capacity above 20 million units a year across eight bases and builds overseas in Bac Ninh, Vietnam, Samut Prakan, Thailand, and Ocoyoacac, Mexico, with a plant in Karawang, Indonesia, under construction. Its Huayu battery subsidiary began mass production of sodium-ion batteries in January 2025.

Aima, headquartered in Jinghai, Tianjin, sold 8.33 million e-bikes and 2.62 million electric motorcycles in 2025 from bases across China, including Henan, Guangxi, Jiangsu, Chongqing, Zhejiang and Shandong. Tailg, headquartered in Wuxi, sold 7.8 million units in the first nine months of 2025, states capacity above 15 million units a year and builds in My Hao, Vietnam. In 2024 Yadea held 26.8% of China's domestic electric two-wheeler market, Aima 17.9% and Tailg 12.7%.

All three build to China's GB 17761-2024 standard for e-bikes, in force since 1 September 2025, which sets a 25 km/h cap with a motor cutoff and requires tamper-proof batteries and controllers. See Moped-Style E-Bikes and Electric Mopeds & Seated Scooters.

Tariffs move factories

Duties Push Assembly to Vietnam, Europe and the US

Trade rules decide where new plants go. The EU has charged anti-dumping and countervailing duties on Chinese e-bikes since 2019 and in January 2025 extended them for five more years, at 10.3% to 70.1% anti-dumping plus 3.9% to 17.2% countervailing.

In the US, e-bikes from China faced combined duties of about 55% as of mid-2025, and Section 301 duties on Chinese e-bike lithium batteries rise from 7.5% to 25% in 2026. Rates have changed often; check current rates before relying on them.

Makers have moved assembly in response. Giant built its Gyongyos, Hungary, plant to serve the EU, and its Vietnam plant, which built about 110,000 bikes in 2025 and plans about 220,000 in 2026, has become its main base for US exports. Tenways opened a joint-venture factory in Portugal; Yadea and Tailg build in Vietnam; and Rad Power Bikes' new owner, Life Electric Vehicles Holdings, plans US final assembly in a Foreign Trade Zone.

Factory list

66 Plants Behind the Brands

Assembly, motor and battery plants from the EbikesX factory dataset, grouped by cluster. Capacity is the stated annual figure where a source gives one; the dataset records the basis and year for each figure.