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Niu Technologies (NIU US) is a Chinese producer of electric scooters. It was founded in 2014 and has quickly gained a following thanks to Niu’s distinctive design language and unique product features.
I’m impressed by Niu’s management team, led by CEO Li Yan and co-founder Token Hu. They seem serious about building Niu into a global powerhouse. You can find a GGV Capital interview with them here.
Niu’s scooters cost about CNY 4,000 in China but way more in Europe, where Niu is also expanding quickly. The majority of Niu’s Chinese scooters stay below the 25km/h maximum speed limit required to avoid the burden of getting a motorcycle license plate and driver’s license. That means that the scooters are mostly used for commuting.
The high torque of electric motors and the resulting fast acceleration makes them fun to drive. Customers also seem to enjoy the technology features of Niu scooters, including the app that can be used to track the vehicle’s location, seamless unlocking, checking the battery status, for insurance claims, and so on.
While relatively small in China’s ~30 million units a year electric scooter market, Niu dominates the fast-growing lithium-ion battery scooter market in top-tier markets. Thanks to regulation and declining lithium-ion battery prices, such scooters have gained market share over the past decade.
Most of China’s electric scooters are still of the lead acid battery variant, and sooner or later, these will be phased out and replaced by lithium-ion battery versions, including those produced by Niu.
Investors seem to favour passenger vehicle EVs over electric scooters. But scooters are much more suitable for electrification, given their low weight and low ticket prices. Asian cities also tend to be heavily congested, and electric scooters solve both the pollution problem and the congestion in one go.
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