Finally, also the most skeptical industry players in Asia are now convinced that e-bikes is really the category that is to shape the industry’s future. Their earlier disinterest has changed completely. This turnaround is also prompted by the anti-dumping duties now in place for e-bikes exported from China to Europe. It blocks the Chinese e-bike producers and exporters. This offers opportunities for makers in other Asian countries like Taiwan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Thailand.

Taiwan is welcoming back companies repatriating their complete production or parts of it back to Taiwan from China. The country’s government even offers these companies financial incentives for that. Taiwan’s biggest maker – Giant – is (partly) switching production back to Taiwan. Tektro and TranzX are examples of others doing the same.

With that the production of bicycles, e-bikes and bike products is changing drastically and on a massive scale. China is losing its place as one of the most important production centers. It’s not only losing its place as the number one sourcing partner for e-bikes and e-bike parts, but also for regular bikes as last June also on this bike category anti-dumping measures were again imposed for a period of five years by the European Union. That blocks lots of Chinese makers doing business in Europe. But the same holds true for the U.S. The ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China results in Trump tariffs which also apply to lots of bike products.

Next to repatriating to Taiwan increasing numbers of Taiwanese bicycle companies are relocating their production back from China to Vietnam. Merida and SR Suntour are the bigger names (partly) switching to Vietnam with smaller others like Composite Gear are following. Vietnam is already considered to be a big production centre for e-bikes. It’s even underway to becoming the leading source for e-bikes. Over 100,000 e-bikes were exported from Vietnam to the EU member states in the first half of 2018. The country is benefitting from eased local content rules that apply to e-bikes exported to Europe. For instance EU made mid-motors fitted in Vietnam made e-bikes are considered to be local content. Next to that the EU-Vietnam free trade agreement is coming into force in the next years bringing tariff-free trade.

Cambodia is nowadays Europe’s biggest supplier of regular bikes. In the first half of 2018 the country exported some 870,000 bicycles to Europe.