The electric bike and motorbike market is full of potential with a growth rate of over 30 percent per annum. With millions of products sold every year, manufacturers and distributors can pocket big money.

However, Vietnamese manufacturers complain that they have to compete with smuggled imports. The imports have no quality control, but are still sold in large quantities.

Doan Ngoc Linh, CEO of Pega, affirmed that 90 percent of electric bikes and bike components available in the market are smuggled across border gates. These products do not have stamps of conformity, invoices and clear origin.

Under current regulations, electric bike drivers don’t have to register vehicles to get number plates. Users do not care about stamps, invoices or other related documents so this has been exploited by smugglers and retailers.

According to Linh, smuggled products have low quality because the input components cannot meet the standards. Many models mimic the design of branded bikes, but can escape management agencies’ control.

The senior executive of an electric bike manufacturing company said many models are smuggled through unofficial channels, while many others are assembled in Vietnam but don’t have certificates of inspection.

The executive, who asked to be anonymous, said many Vietnam companies import components for assembly and declare low prices. By conniving with some ‘bogus’ companies at border gates, they split the components to increase the number of separate components eligible for the preferential tariff.

“One product is sold at VND13 million, but the invoice shows the selling price of VND3-5 million only,” he said.

A representative of a large manufacturing company said there are ‘disguised electric bikes’ in the market. The products are introduced as electric bikes, but their parameters are equivalent to electric motorcycles, including weight of over 40 kilograms and speed of over 25 kilometers per hour.

“The disguised electric bikes are competing unhealthily with authentic motorbike manufacturers,” he said.

After state management agencies tightened control over electric bikes, the number of disguised products declined significantly. However, to ‘please customers’, retailers use ‘skills’ to increase the speed of bikes.

Some manufacturers have even openly gave instructions on how to remove the speed limit device to increase the speed. This puts bike drivers in danger when they are in traffic. The users of electric bikes are mostly students.

The control over electric motorbikes appears to be tighter than on electric bikes because users have to have their motorbike registered with state mangement agencies.

However, fraud has been discovered: the declared prices of products are 30-50 percent lower than the real value, which allows importers to avoid tax. 

Phuong Nguyen

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