Despite a mind-boggling population of 24 million, Shanghai seems like a questionable location for a custom bike shop. Chinese laws make it expensive to register imported vehicles, and the bigger the capacity, the harder it gets.
Still, this hasn’t deterred Kiwi Matthew Waddick and his crew at Shanghai Customs. When they launched three years ago, their focus was small capacity, gas-powered customs. But as restrictions have become tighter, they’ve gone electric.

The guys are still building a few petrol bikes a year (there’s a SR500 and a CB400 on the bench), but a big part of their daily grind now involves electric bikes.
?There is a big electric trend in China at the moment,? explains Matthew, ?mainly driven by policy and crazy prices for license plates in the big cities. Electric bikes don’t need plates or a license to drive here?yet.?
?So we focus more on electric now?upgrading motors, controllers and batteries as a day-to-day breadwinner.?
Shanghai Customs also have two production models in the works: an electric scooter, and a petrol bike that’s being made for the export market. In the midst of all that chaos, they’ve somehow found time to build this prototype electric street tracker.

At a glance, it looks like the perfect urban runabout. But what’s really striking is that it cuts a similar silhouette to, say, a Yamaha SR. A completely intentional move on Matthew’s part.
?Researching electric bikes online, I always ...