On a recent vacation in China, I visited a wide variety of companies and factories in the micromobility sector. Many had big names and a bigger reputation, but one company surprised me as a quiet and relatively unknown force as one of the largest e-bike companies in the world. corporations.
Meet Lishui, the company you’ve probably never heard of that almost uses their products.
Inside the nondescript buildings of the controller manufacturer are a series of laboratories and production halls where R
To get your own behind-the-scenes look, continue my excursion in the video below. So read on for all the details!
As I explored the facility, it was to be missed by the sheer number of e-bikes parked pedal-to-pedal, combined in and around the labs. Many have been manufactured through some of the largest e-bike corporations in the industry, whether in North America. and Europe.
Yes, the corporations you’re thinking about now, their motorcycles were there. The others too. It’s a real who’s who of electric motorcycle players. I can’t make calls because Lishui doesn’t publicly announce who uses its products. And I had to blur them all in the video and photos, either to protect their identities or because the maximum number of motorcycles are new, unreleased models that arrive early in Lishui to be tested with the company’s latest controllers and propulsion components.
But the numbers speak for themselves: Lishui has more than 1,900 consumers worldwide and has sold more than thirteen million controllers to date. According to the company, 1 in 3 e-bikes in Europe travel with a Lishui controller.
This good luck was neither easy nor quick. The company has been around since 1979 and started producing motor controllers for other industries. When the nascent e-bike industry came to fruition, Lishui switched to purely micromobility controllers in 1997.
Unlike many e-bike component brands, Lishui sets itself apart because it makes all the software and hardware progress in-house. There is no outsourcing here, they have their own team of almost 60 engineers who deal with the hardware and software side.
Many of these engineers have been with the company for more than a decade, which helps them retain the kind of skill and enjoyment that tends to rise to the top.
Lishui’s products cover 3 main markets: 250W low-power controllers for European e-bikes, 500W to 2000W higher-consumption controllers for the North American market, and specialized controllers, such as those with traditional designs for compatibility with battery boxes and others. For the latter group, the company has developed close ties with leading battery brands over the past decade to have them integrate their controllers directly into their battery boxes.
And while many companies are building controllers, Lishui is further differentiating itself with a traditional IoT suite, which necessarily turns its controllers into connected devices that allow businesses and even end-users to connect to the controllers via their phones and configure or update configurations at will.
Along the way, Lishui has expanded its scope to include designing Bluetooth-enabled handlebar presentations to further take advantage of its complicated controllers.
But the design of those parts is only part of the battle. Lishui also manages the in-house production of its high-tech parts, processes based on repetitive quality controls, and spot testing to ensure that all parts are produced correctly.
Much of the PCB production takes place here, and Lishui operates its own commercial soldering machines. However, some manual welding tasks are carried out for larger components, such as thicker force wires.
The published circuit forums then move on to the meeting stages, where they are encased in an extruded aluminum casing and then filled with curtains to protect the electronic parts from water.
The controllers then move on to the inspection stage, where they are connected to a check bench that runs a series of 76 unique controls on the controllers. Each controller performs those checks, making sure that each and every product that leaves the factory has been electronically inspected for compliance and performance.
Interestingly, they even allowed me to see some facets of the plant that I wasn’t expecting. For example, the founder of the company, Mr. Xu, who has a wonderful hobby of gardening, has necessarily converted each and every plot of land into the commercial plant. Complex in vast gardens.
It has its own greenhouse for decorative plants, but also giant greenhouses for developing food during the winter months. Vines and trees dot the property, and a good-sized farm is tucked away behind one of the warehouses, which is used to grow food used in the factory cafeteria for workers.
In fact, Mr. Xu eats the same food in the same cafeteria as the workers, which is a refreshing sight to watch. In other factories, I’ve noticed VIP spaces on the side for bosses to eat, so it’s wonderful to see that. Everyone, from the new employee to the company’s founder, shares the same lunch.
Does this affect the quality of the drivers? Maybe not. But the intelligent temperament that comes from walking among trees and flowers all day, plus knowing that your boss is rarely sitting in an ivory tower, is actually helping to create a more pleasurable atmosphere when running. After all, this affects the quality of the paints.
In the few hours I spent traveling around Lishui, I went from not knowing much about this hard-to-understand controller manufacturer to a much deeper understanding of how they can supply millions of controllers to the world’s biggest e-bike brands.
All of this is based on their extensive knowledge and experience in the field, their determination for in-house development and their rigorous quality controls.
And as an enticing final note, after seeing all those secret e-bikes lining the hallways and sides of the company’s control track, I now realize that I’ve had a few Lishui controllers in my garage at home all along.
Micah Toll is an electric vehicle enthusiast, battery enthusiast and one of the number one best-selling books on Amazon, Lithium Batteries for DIY, Solar for DIY, The Ultimate Guide to DIY Electric Bikes, and The Electric Bike Manifesto.
The e-bikes that make up current Micah users are the $999 Lectric XP 2. 0, the $1,095 Ride1Up Roadster V2, the $1,199 RadMission Rad Power Bikes, and the $3,299 Priority Current. But it’s a list that’s evolving quite a bit these days.
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