So your are interested in Buying an electric bike / scooter and while you’ve seen them at the stores the manuals are all in Chinese and you’ve been around China long enough to know that you can’t trust a word that the salesman says. Well you’ve come to the right place. I decided I wanted to buy an electric scooter after I rented one during our holiday in Yangshuo, so when I came back to Beijing I went online to find out what the deal was. Unfortunately most of the information I found was really old and out of date. Normally that wouldn’t be an issue but originally the government was planning on banning electric bikes
inside the 4th ring road by 2005. That all changed when carbon pollution became a hot political issue and now China is actively encouraging electric bikes. Up until the beginning of the year there wasn’t any information about electric scooters because they weren’t bikes because they didn’t have peddles and they weren’t motor bikes either. That got cleared up in January when they were officially classified as bikes because they have zero emissions.
After talking to a number of people the current situation seems to be that electric scooter and electric bikes are treated exactly the same as bikes except for the fact that you have to register them. Registration costs about 10 RMB and if you buy it from one of the smaller shops they’ll even do it for you if you’re willing to wait or come back the next day. If you want to get the plates yourself then you’ll need a letter from the store to prove that you bought it as well as a residency permit and your passport. Unfortunately most of the bike
stores don’t sell helmets so you’ll probably have to go to Decathlon to buy one. You’ll also want to buy a lock so you can lock your new expensive bike to a pole or something.
Now if all of this sounds like a lot of work there are a lot of reasons why you might want to buy an electric bike:
- No more taxi fares.
- No more waiting on the sidewalk for a taxi.
- No more sitting in peak hour traffic.
- It’s much more convenient than a car.
- You have a lot more freedom to explore.
- It’s 100% legal unlike a motor bike.
- They are really cheap and pay for themselves.
You are interested? Well now comes the hard part. Do you want an electric scooter or an electric bike?
| Feature | Bike | Scooter |
| Cost | 1,500 to 2,500 (RMB) | 2,500 to 4,000 (RMB) |
| Battery Weight | ~15 kg | ~25kg |
| Batter Style | Easy to Carry | Needs a trolley |
| Charge time | ~ 6 hours | ~ 8 hours |
| Range | ~30km | ~60km |
| Backup Power | Peddles | Pushing the scooter |
| Storage | Basket/Rear storage | Under seat + Rear storage |
If you don’t know what to get I’d personally recommend getting a high end bike rather than a scooter because if you run out of batteries then you don’t have to walk it home and the batteries are so much eaier to carry up the stairs. That being said I ended up buying a scooter because it takes me over an hour to
get to work every day and the electric bikes just don’t have the range.
You can find electric bikes almost anywhere. Most bike stores carry a high end model and a low end model and if you can’t find a bike store then Carrefour and Walmart have them. The electric scooters are still a bit hard to find because they’ve only been available for about six months but I was able to find a Xin Ri dealership at this location. If you want to find out more about their products use Google Translate or Babel Fish.
Over the next couple of weeks I’ll try to add to this post (including more pictures), so if you have any questions or comments please feel free to contact me.
Nathaniel Brown
Update April 2008:
I move to a new blog and the comments were not carried over but here are the answers to the questions:
- The difference between the cheaper bikes and the more expensive ones that look almost the sake is:
- The cheaper bikes a spokes which can get damaged more easily. The expensive ones have stronger wheels.
- The cheaper bikes often has smaller batteries - 12 or 14 instead of 16. The means that they will slow down sooner going up hills or under weight and have a shorter range.
- They might have a slower engine although generally the bikes look different then.
- A new subway line just opened up next to the store were we bought the scooter. Catch the Subway to Zhangzizhonglu and then go out the north west exit. The store is less than 20 meters away (Since you are in China this store may no longer exist)
