On my most recent trip to China, I had the pleasure of visiting NIU’s factory and showroom to see the wide range of electric mopeds, scooters, e-bikes, and more produced by one of the world’s leading smart electric mobility companies. As an electric mobility journalist and enthusiast (and as an owner of my own NIU e-moped since 2020), it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to peek behind the curtain and see where the magic happens.

And now after such an eye-opening visit, I’m even more excited to share that experience with you!

My visit included a full day at NIU’s factory, starting in the showroom to see a range of the company’s products. NIU essentially has two main markets: the local Chinese market and everywhere else in the world.

China is the company’s largest market, not only because of the home-field advantage but because no other place in the world has jumped into electric mopeds and scooters with both feet like China has.

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To get a sense of the breadth of NIU’s vehicles, and to see deep inside the production floor, check out my video tour below. Or keep reading for the written version of my trip!

Walking through the showroom revealed that reality firsthand, with so many models I’d never seen before. As it turns out, as wide-ranging as the international lineup we’ve come to know is, NIU’s domestic lineup is even wider!

Because of local regulations that encourage people to commute by e-bike, the mopeds are true mopeds, as in they have actual pedals. I doubt many people use the pedals, but you’ll find these cute little pedals on most of the models. Many are single-seaters, but you’ll also see plenty of pillion seats as rack add-ons. These are popular with parents who carry their children on the back for school drop-offs.

Many of these domestic scooters use lead acid batteries, which are more cost-effective for budget-minded riders, but I learned something new about those batteries.

While we often think of lead acid batteries as older technology, NIU has brought a lot of its technology for battery monitoring and BMSs (battery management systems) from its lithium battery models over to its lead acid battery models.

This means the batteries are smarter, better protected, last longer, and generally provide better performance than what many of us are used to from older-style lead acid batteries.

In addition to the many domestic market models, NIU also has plenty of larger models with higher performance, many meant for the international market, ranging from their seated electric scooters to fully-fledged electric motorcycles.

The company even has a new electric dirt bike, full-size electric bicycles, and standing electric scooters, though those are primarily designed for the European and North American markets.

As a special treat, I even got to see the sole NIU TQi still remaining. It was a leaning, covered, three-wheeler concept that never quite made it to production – perhaps as a casualty of the pandemic years that shook up the industry. But with any luck, it could be eclipsed by a new four-wheeled concept that the company seems pretty gung-ho about.

Like any self-respecting vehicle maker, NIU performs all of its own R&D, developing its products and testing their components to ensure they can meet the demanding specifications required by long-life on-road vehicles.

The R&D center I explored had everything from underwater button-mashing machines (in case you want to know if your hazard lights button can be pressed tens of thousands of times while your scooter is submerged in a tank of water) to rapid temperature-changing machines and UV aging apparatuses.

Full-size test benches vigorously shake scooters and mopeds with weight plates attached to them, simulating the weight of a rider and the violence of real-world commuting on less-than-perfect roads. If something is going to break, this is the test that would tell you. It looks pretty aggresive and makes me feel a lot better about the scooter that I ride nearly every day on the highway.

From there, we moved to the sprawling factory floor. The process begins with the inspection area, where orange-clad employees go through all the incoming components to perform quality inspections and ensure the subcontractors are producing the components properly to NIU’s specs.

The walls are covered with detailed images and diagrams reminding the employees of what to keep an eye out for, often with examples of what would disqualify a component from progressing to the assembly lines.

Just like the components that checked all the boxes, we passed along to the assembly line area too. We began in the pre-assembly area. Here, hanging racks are pre-loaded with various components that will be needed at various stages of moped assembly. These racks are carried off on a flying conveyor system and then lowered down next to workers on the assembly lines at the correct point for each component’s assembly stage.

I had to take the non-flying route, walking from the pre-assembly area to one of the many assembly lines. Here I got to see those racks dropping down as employees plucked off key switches, handlebars, wiring harnesses, body panels, fenders, and other parts like they were eating at a revolving sushi conveyor belt restaurant. It was really neat to see how each part landed in the right spot of the assembly line at the right time, like an engineering ballet all coming together.

As rolling chassis were slowly moved down the assembly line, they were transformed in a matter of minutes from bare tubular frames to shiny, sleek-looking electric mopeds. If you walked too quickly down the line, you’d have missed major steps completely. That’s how fast the ballet comes together as the skilled employees work together like a well-oiled machine.

Each assembly line saw a different model of moped rolling down the ending ramp towards a waiting group of inspectors. The inspection checkpoint is manned by quality verification employees who run through a many-point checklist in a well-lit tunnel to find imperfections or assembly mistakes.

Once the bikes pass those checks, they move on to the riding test, where still more employees take a hot lap around the factory before handing the moped off to the next stage. Some scooters even go through water testing with a rain simulator, though it seems like this is part of the R&D verification stage – not something that gets performed on every scooter. And based on how well my own NIU has held up when I’ve had to leave it out in pouring rain from time to time, those rain tests at the factory that help NIU’s engineers ensure good water protection seem to be working!

From here, the mopeds are rolled off to the warehouse, where they’re organized by model and prepared for trucks that will either deliver them to shops and dealers around the country or be prepped for international customers who distribute them all over the world.

But just one assembly area wouldn’t be enough to get a true sense of the scale at NIU, especially since the company makes so many unique products. Next, we headed to the standing electric scooter assembly area. These smaller rides have shorter assembly lines thanks to the generally more simple design and reduced number of components.

The test area seems to be a bit more varied though, including sections of rocks and gravel as well as ramps and bumpers. The testing takes place right next to the assembly area, with a custom designed test track right there on the factory floor.

Once the scooters pass their inspection station and fly through the test track, they’re sent off for packaging. Because these are largely built for export, the scooters are individually packaged instead of being bulk-loaded onto trucks. The packaging line prepares each scooter, folds it, surrounds it in protective foam, and seals its box. When you buy a NIU scooter online, these are the last hands to touch it before yours when you pop open the box.

Similarly, I also saw how the packaging is performed for the NIU XQi3 electric dirt bike. Since this model is also designed for export, these are individually packaged as well. But instead of a simple cardboard box, they get a steel frame for better protection of the heavy bikes. The models I saw were being packaged for the Canadian dealer who is probably receiving them around the time that this article is being published.

After getting the chance to tour many different areas of the production floor, we visited the test-riding area of the complex. Here, a team of riders performs long-term testing of different models. While every NIU product gets a cursory ride before its final inspection sheet can be completed, the company ensures that several of each model undergo long-term testing with tens of thousands of actual road kilometers. There are NIU employees whose job is simply to ride all day and look for issues. It’s that kind of testing that truly reveals anything that could be a hidden systematic issue, the types of things that wouldn’t show up on a five-minute end-of-line test ride.

While I wasn’t going to be doing anywhere near that level of riding, I still got a partial experience by getting to borrow several of those vehicles for my own short test rides. From cute little low-power electric mopeds to the highest-power and fastest models in the company’s lineup, I spent the next hour or two throwing my leg over (or through) them all. This was also my first chance to ride the RQi electric motorcycle, which is a real, honest-to-goodness electric motorcycle. It won’t nearly throw you off like a Zero or Energica (RIP), but it has some fun power that I’m not used to getting out of usually tamer NIU mopeds.

The same could be said for the XQi3 electric dirt bike, which is a major upgrade over something like a Sur Ron. In fact, the bike is even street-legal as an electric motorcycle in North America, where it can be registered for on-road use, too! And with its high torque letting me pop the front wheel up even accidentally, this is definitely a model that you can have some serious fun with just about anywhere.

As an added treat, at the end of the day, they let me explore the engineering area upstairs, though I had to be specially key-swiped into those floors.

I wasn’t allowed to film or take photos in the engineering area. There were dozens upon dozens of test mule scooters and bikes scattered throughout the floors, most with a team of engineers huddled around them with diagnostic tools and armfuls of scooter components. The whole place had a real “senior design project” feel to it that I remember vividly from engineering school.

I also noted what looked like a few models that had quite obviously been covered by black sheets before I was invited in. Despite my questions, the NIU team was valiantly tight-lipped about those. It certainly makes me wonder what could be coming next. Based on the high-energy feeling of the engineering department, like standing in the middle of a beehive with hyper-focused worker bees all buzzing around you, the engineering team seems hard at work on some interesting new models for the next few years.

The whole experience was eye-opening from several angles. As someone who has ridden an NIU electric moped for years, often as my wife and I’s daily driver, I never knew how much went into its design and production. I always felt good about it from the consumer side, but now I know just how much effort goes into the safety and longevity aspect of the design, which is all the more comforting.

At the same time, I gained insight into the factory that I wouldn’t have ever known. While the repetitive work of an assembly line is probably not the most exciting job ever, many of the employees seemed to actually be having fun. I’d often see them chatting and laughing together while assembling different components. There may have been a language barrier, but some things are universal. I’ve worked enough service and labor jobs to know what bantering with your coworkers looks like, and laughter doesn’t even have an accent.

So for me, the experience was illuminating and informative, opening a window into a world I never get to see. For most of us, our experience with the micromobility products we ride each day starts at purchase. But the story really begins much earlier, with years of design work culminating in many skilled hands bringing those ideas and materials to life in the form of something that helps us navigate our world. It’s a reminder that every scooter, bike, or board carries not just its rider, but the work and vision of countless people who made it possible.