After selling hundreds of thousands of E-bikes every year, this company is set to develop AI mobility | 36Kr Exclusive

Author | Zhang Ziyi

Editor | Yuan Silai

Hard Krypton learned that DYU, an intelligent light mobility enterprise, has recently completed a nearly 100 million yuan Pre-B round of financing. This round is led by Tongxin Capital, with multiple institutions participating in the investment. The raised funds will be mainly used for new product R&D, intelligent technology upgrading, global brand building and supply chain capacity improvement.

Over the ten years since its establishment, DYU's main products are E-bikes. In the past two years, DYU has begun to develop into a global intelligent mobility platform covering intelligent light travel, outdoor intelligent movement and AI Mobility.

During the epidemic period, the E-bike market in Europe experienced a rapid surge in demand, which also led to inventory accumulation. According to data from CONEBI, the European Bicycle Industry Confederation, a total of about 5.1 million E-bikes were sold in 27 EU countries and the United Kingdom in 2023, down from 5.5 million units in 2022; the industry then entered an inventory digestion cycle. By 2024, the demand in the European market has gradually returned to the normal level before the epidemic, but manufacturers are still actively cutting production to digest previous inventories.

The E-bike market has been destocking for the past two years, and many market players have been eliminated from the market.

However, Li Wei, Founder and CEO of DYU, told Hard Krypton: "At present, the sales pressure of mid-to-high-end models priced at 2,000 to 5,000 euros in Europe is relatively high, and many local brands continue to cut prices; DYU focuses on the mass market of 500 to 2,000 euros, among which small-wheel models are priced at about 500 to 1,000 euros, and large models are about 1,000 to 2,000 euros. This is also the price range where Chinese brands' supply chain and cost advantages are most concentrated."

DYU's previous main products were small and medium wheel diameter folding E-bikes. After consolidating its position in the original segmented market, DYU's products have expanded from commuter E-bikes to recreational categories such as Dirt Bikes (light off-road electric motorcycles) and fat tire bikes. Since 2023 and 2024, the company has significantly accelerated the expansion of SKUs.

In Li Wei's view, E-bikes are not as highly standardized as mobile phones, and different models are needed to cover users of different heights, from different countries and in different usage scenarios.

There are also obvious differences in regional demand. European regulations are stricter, and commuting is still the main scenario; road and outdoor environments in the United States are more relaxed, and the demand for recreational activities is stronger. Therefore, DYU has deployed outdoor recreational vehicle products in the US market with a separate brand. The company stated that this business currently contributes about 20% of its revenue, and the growth rate of its segmented market in the past two years has exceeded 25%.

At this stage, DYU is preparing to upgrade from the traditional E-bike category to intelligent light mobility.

This year, the company launched an electric Wagon, which is mainly used in scenarios such as camping, beaches and yards in Europe and the United States. Traditional similar products rely on human power to drag. DYU adds electric drive and riding functions on the basis of hand carts, and the current selling price is about 1,200 US dollars.

Compared with entering a completely unfamiliar hardware industry from scratch, the electric Wagon can directly reuse DYU's accumulated capabilities in E-bikes in terms of motors, batteries, drive control, mass production of complete vehicles and channel resources. For existing channels such as Costco and outdoor supermarkets, Wagon and E-bike both target family outdoor and leisure consumer groups.

The next generation of Wagon will continue to add intelligent capabilities.

At present, the first-generation products sold by DYU do not have the intelligent following function. The company plans to add target recognition, automatic following and obstacle avoidance functions to subsequent products: for example, when the user walks on the beach, the Wagon can follow by itself and carry luggage, and can be ridden directly when needed. In the future, DYU hopes to further develop Wagon into a general-purpose mobile chassis product.

In addition to product expansion, another long-term accumulation of DYU is its overseas KA channels.

In 2018, DYU entered the US Costco, and at that time, a small-wheel folding E-bike priced at more than 600 US dollars was quite matched with Costco's mass consumer group. In 2020, the annual sales volume of Costco as a single channel alone exceeded 100,000 units. Since then, the company has successively entered Best Buy and many large retail systems in Europe and the United States.

At present, the company stated that KA supermarkets contribute more than half of its sales revenue, and there are more than 1,000 cooperative offline outlets in the United States and Europe. The deployment of top KAs in the United States started early, and now it is continuing to expand to vertical retailers in outdoor, courtyard and other segments; Europe has accelerated its KA deployment since 2023.

Li Wei told Hard Krypton: "Large supermarkets are not just an additional sales channel, and making product designs meet the requirements of supermarket channels is also a key priority."

After purchasing E-bikes online, some large-wheel models still require users or bicycle shops to complete the assembly; to enter large supermarkets, products need to be as easy to install as possible and ready to use right after unboxing. Different channels have different requirements for packaging size, product structure, certification and after-sales service, so adaptation needs to be carried out from the product definition stage. At the same time, from certification, system docking to performance and continuous supply, it often takes a long time for new suppliers to enter large retail systems.

"I define products in reverse according to market demand and channels, and look for suppliers to supplement the missing capabilities." Li Wei believes that compared with developing all underlying technologies on its own, DYU's more important capability is to turn technologies into mature consumer products and finally achieve large-scale delivery.

The Wagon product is a clear expansion attempt. The next step for DYU is to verify whether "electrifying tools and then making them intelligent" can truly become a new growth curve beyond E-bikes.

CEO Dialogue

Hard Krypton: More and more companies are now developing intelligent mobility and automatic following products. Facing these competitors, what does DYU rely on to compete?

Li Wei of DYU: I think when making consumer hardware today, there is no need to reinvent every technology on your own. For example, LiDAR and following chips already have very mature supply chains in China; we will develop some motor drive algorithms on our own, but there is no need to develop chips and LiDAR all by ourselves.

For E-bikes, our more important capabilities lie in product definition and implementation. For E-bikes, I know what the market needs and what channels need, then define products in reverse; if there is a missing capability, we will find the most suitable solution through joint development in the supply chain. Finally, we need to turn it into a mature consumer product, control costs, complete certification, mass production and delivery, and finally place it on the shelves of the world's mainstream retail stores.

Hard Krypton: Over the past ten years, DYU has been mainly producing E-bikes. In the next ten years, what kind of company do you hope it will become?

Li Wei of DYU: We did focus on E-bikes in the past. After 2016, we basically only made E-bikes, and we didn't even make electric scooters. Now we hope to move towards a larger intelligent mobility platform, but our boundary is very clear, which is to focus on wheels, travel, passenger transport and cargo transport.

E-bikes are still our core business, but we will not only have E-bikes in the future. The current Wagon is essentially electrifying the products that used to be pulled by manpower first, and then making them intelligent. There will also be products such as Dirt Bikes and golf trolleys in the future, all moving in this direction.

In the longer term, we hope to precipitate these capabilities into a general-purpose AI mobile chassis. It can carry goods when equipped with a cargo frame, and people can ride it when equipped with a seat. In the future, we will add functions such as recognition, following and road condition judgment, so that it can actively assist people to complete movement.

AI is still in the R&D stage on the product side at present, but I think in the next ten years, AI will definitely penetrate into the physical world more and more. For us, the next step is to continue to move from electrification to intelligence.