Every dealer who asks us for a quotation eventually asks the same follow-up question: should the bikes ship with batteries installed, or not? It sounds like a detail. It is usually the single largest variable in the landed cost of a container, and it also decides who carries the warranty risk for the part most likely to fail.
There are three ways to ship an electric motorcycle, and each one moves cost, paperwork and risk to a different place. Below is what actually changes in each case, including the parts that are inconvenient for us to admit.
Option 1 — Lead-acid batteries installed
This is the default for most of Latin America, and for good reason: the cells are cheap, every workshop in the region already knows how to service them, and replacements are available locally in any city with a motorcycle trade.
What it costs you. Lead-acid packs are heavy. A 60V or 72V pack adds meaningful weight to every unit, and weight is what you pay for on the ocean leg. It also affects how the container is loaded — the exact figures differ per model and per battery configuration, which is why loading counts should always be confirmed against the specific configuration you are ordering rather than taken from a general table.
The paperwork. Lead-acid batteries are not unregulated. Wet cells filled with acid are classified as corrosive goods, and non-spillable types fall under a separate entry with their own conditions. Ocean freight is considerably more permissive than air, which is why almost all of this trade moves by sea, but the declaration still has to be correct. Getting it wrong is a customs problem at the destination port, not at origin.
The risk nobody mentions. Transit from a Chinese port to Colombia or Peru is measured in weeks, not days, and lead-acid cells self-discharge while they sit. A pack that leaves the factory fully charged does not arrive fully charged. Left long enough in a discharged state, lead-acid sulfates and permanently loses capacity. If the container then sits in customs, that clock keeps running. This is the most common cause of “the batteries were already weak when they arrived” disputes, and it is rarely anyone’s fault in particular — which is exactly what makes it hard to resolve.
Option 2 — Lithium batteries installed
Lithium is lighter, lasts more cycles, and holds resale value better. For a dealer selling to delivery fleets — riders who charge daily and care about cycle life — it is often the better product. It is also the most complicated to ship.
The paperwork. Lithium batteries are dangerous goods. Before a shipment can be booked, the cells need a UN 38.3 test report, which covers altitude, thermal, vibration, shock, and short-circuit testing. Vehicles with lithium batteries installed are declared differently from loose battery shipments, and the packaging itself has to be certified for dangerous goods. In China this means the factory needs a dangerous goods packaging certificate for the cartons used.
What it costs you. Fewer carriers accept dangerous goods, fewer sailings are available, and the freight rate is higher than for equivalent general cargo. Booking lead times are longer. If a sailing is missed, the next one may not be next week. The unit weight is lower than lead-acid, which helps, but the freight premium and the schedule risk usually cancel that advantage out on smaller orders.
Where it makes sense anyway. If your buyers are fleet operators rather than individual riders, the total cost of ownership argument does the selling for you, and the paperwork is a fixed cost you absorb once and then repeat. For a first trial order of 100 units, it is a lot of friction for an unproven market.
Option 3 — Shipped without batteries
The bikes arrive complete except for the cells. You source batteries locally and install them before sale.
What you gain. The freight bill drops, because you are no longer paying to move lead across an ocean. The dangerous goods declaration disappears entirely, which means more carriers, more sailings, and a simpler customs file. And the battery — the component most likely to be the subject of a warranty claim — is now covered by a supplier in your own country, in your own language, with a replacement available in days rather than a shipment away.
That last point is worth more than it first appears. When a battery fails eighteen months after delivery, the practical question is not who is contractually responsible. It is how fast the customer gets a working bike back. A local battery supplier wins that comparison every time.
What it costs you — and this is the honest part. You now own a sourcing problem. The pack has to match the voltage the controller expects, the physical compartment, and the connector. If you buy cells that are nominally the right voltage but a different chemistry or capacity, range and performance will not match what the specification sheet says, and your customers will blame the motorcycle rather than the battery.
It also blurs the warranty boundary. If a controller fails on a bike running a battery we never supplied, establishing cause is genuinely harder — for both sides. The way to keep this clean is to agree the battery specification in writing before the order ships, so that “compatible” means something specific rather than something arguable later.
A rough way to choose
First order into a new market, price-sensitive buyers, local battery trade already established — ship without batteries. Lowest freight, simplest customs, and you find out what your market actually takes before committing to a battery strategy.
Established retail channel, individual riders, buyers expect a complete product on the showroom floor — lead-acid installed. Familiar to the end user, serviceable everywhere, lowest unit price.
Selling to delivery fleets, high daily usage, buyers who calculate cost per kilometre — lithium, and accept the dangerous goods process as the cost of serving that segment properly.
What to send us for an accurate quotation
A price for an electric motorcycle without a specified battery configuration and destination is not a real price. To quote something you can actually use for planning, we need four things:
The models and quantities you are considering. Your destination port. Which of the three shipping options above you want quoted — or ask for two of them side by side, which is often more useful. And, if you already have a target landed price per unit, tell us what it is. It is faster for everyone if we say early that a number is not reachable than if we discover it after three rounds of quotations.
All twelve models in our range can be quoted in any of the three configurations. Minimum order is 100 units, and models can be mixed within one container, so a first order can carry more than one configuration if you want to test the difference in your own market before committing.