Gobao might be a relatively young player in the bike industry, but it carries a lot of experience in the field of electronic controllers. After the company was founded in 2002, it focused on electronic controllers for electric two-wheelers for well over 20 years. In 2018, the Chinese brand launched its first e-bike motor and started expanding its work into the bike industry more and more.
A true hidden champion is how Eric Zhang characterises the company. The CEO underscores the B2B focus of the Chinese company. “That is the reason that we might not be super well known. But if you look at our products, we are the biggest player in the field of motor controllers as there are 150 million motors worldwide with our controllers in them,” he claims. “Our proposition is very clear: we want to be an enabler of OEM brands. We want them to be the shining star, instead of our system. We build an open platform that different brands can use and differentiate in their own way.”
User experience
Although the brand is relatively new to the European market, Gobao believes it possesses the know-how and production power to gain traction in the Western bike industry. The introduction of the X1 was a demonstration of that. “The response of both OEMs and consumers at Eurobike was very positive. We heard a lot of people had been looking for a product like this for years. We are not just introducing a motor, but a complete system.”
One specific feature that is particularly important for Gobao is supercharging. A technology that the brand will be using more and more in the future. “That is also a big innovation in the battery industry for bikes, but it is not completely new. The knowledge has already been used in the automotive industry, but we adapted it to our industry. It has been matured for some time and now we are introducing it to the e-bike industry to generate a totally new user experience,” Zhang states.
Directly after, he underscores that said user experience is what Gobao tries to centre its innovations around. “Instead of providing more power and torque, which is not even that difficult, we need to look at providing a better customer experience and improving safety. Simply increasing the power and torque is easy for us, but we need to focus more on innovation. We need to make riding behaviour better and safer.”
Development in different fields
Looking ahead at 2027, mass production of the X1 drive unit is a top priority for the company and it is also launching a new mid-drive motor. At the same time, Gobao doesn’t just focus its development on hardware. The company is paying attention to software just as much, especially with the exponential growth of AI.
“We are working on a more intelligent system. Right now, people are mainly focused on hardware, but we see a lot of room for digital development,” says Zhang. “We want the motor to be able to self-learn, for example, what the best riding behaviour is. The system should be able to understand the rider better. That can also help in terms of service. If the digital platform understands when something is wrong with the motor, it can send a notification to the user or to nearby dealers, to help them get the bike serviced. We are working on an AI-enabled platform that brings all the parts together into a more integrated and intelligent system.”
People are mainly focused on hardware, but we see a lot of room for digital development”
Besides product-related developments, Gobao aims to build a better service organisation to increase its service coverage. “We already have local agencies to deliver service to bike dealers. We will extend that to a global level, which means we can cover every country in Europe, North America and even Asia in the short term. We have a special program to grow that network because we want to be ready to deliver service before consumers even need it.”
With new hardware, software system integration and a growing service network, Gobao fosters big ambitions for 2027. And there’s even more to come. “Some things might be too early to disclose, but you can definitely say there’s more coming,” Zhang concludes with a grin.
This article is sponsored by Gobao.
