Jeff Brines wrote a great piece this week on whether DJI is reshaping the bike industry. Read it. The spec analysis is sharp, and his Apple/Nokia analogy lands. But Jeff’s lens is primarily that of a consumer and a rider. He wants better bikes, cheaper. He’s “fully Avinox-pilled.”

My lens is different. From where I sit, the Avinox story isn’t primarily about a better motor. It’s about a seismic change in the competitive landscape — one that the industry hasn’t fully reckoned with yet.

Let me explain why.

The Industry Was Already Bleeding Out

Before we even get to DJI, let’s be honest about the condition of the patient.

The cycling industry has spent the last three years unwinding one of the most catastrophic inventory corrections in its history. Brands that over-ordered during the COVID boom found themselves drowning in unsold product. Retailers shuttered. Distributors collapsed. Margins evaporated. Major players took write-downs that would have been unthinkable in 2021. The private equity money that flooded in during the boom has largely turned sour, with firms looking for exit ramps that don’t exist.

This is the environment into which DJI has chosen to enter. Not randomly — with intention. Well-capitalized disruptors don’t pick their moments by accident. They wait until the incumbents are weak, cash-strapped, and structurally unable to respond. Then they move.

That moment is now.

The Ingredient Brand Trap

When a brand adopts the Avinox drive system, they’re not just selecting a motor. They’re making a strategic bet — and most of them don’t fully understand what they’re betting.

A drive system encompasses the motor, battery, battery management system, sensors, display, app, firmware, and the orchestration software layer that governs all of it. You build your frame geometry around it. You spec your battery compartment to it. Your customer’s entire riding experience — the thing they feel the moment they put a foot to the pedal — is controlled by it. There is no interchangeability. There is no mix and match.

Once you commit, you’re not a bicycle company anymore. You’re an assembler. The most important part of the experience your customer will ever feel belongs to someone in Shenzhen.

And here’s the part that should keep executives awake at night: that someone in Shenzhen also sells bikes.

Amflow — DJI’s in-house bike brand — is reportedly already Fox’s number one eBike customer. A brand that didn’t exist three years ago. Buying more Fox suspension than companies with 30 years of history. If that stat doesn’t land like a cold bucket of water, read it again.

This Is Not the Shimano Situation

I’ve heard the counterargument: “We’ve always depended on component suppliers. That’s just how the bike industry works.”

True. But the Shimano analogy breaks down fast, and it’s worth understanding why.

When a brand builds a bike around Shimano GRX or SRAM Eagle, they’re integrating a drivetrain — a meaningful system, but one consumers evaluate independently. Riders know what groupset they want. There’s a market in the middle. Brands retain identity.

A drive unit is categorically different. The performance gap between systems is visceral and immediately legible to any rider. You don’t need to read a spec sheet to know the Avinox motor feels different. You know within thirty seconds of riding it. That’s not Shimano versus SRAM. That’s iOS versus whatever was running on Nokia.

And when the supplier that controls the single most important part of your product also competes with you directly in the finished goods market — that is a structural conflict of interest baked permanently into your supply chain. You are, quite literally, funding your own disruption every time you place a motor order.

The Vertical Integration Clock Is Already Running

Jeff speculates about Amflow eventually moving into drivetrains. I’d frame it less as speculation and more as a historical inevitability.

BYD manufactures roughly 75% of its own vehicle components. DJI builds its own motors, batteries, cameras, gimbals, flight controllers, and flight software for its drone business. The vertical integration instinct is deep in DJI’s DNA. You don’t build a company of 14,000 engineers by outsourcing the interesting problems to other people.

Today, Amflow buys frames, suspension, drivetrains, brakes, and tires from western suppliers. Each of those line items is a target. The current drivetrain architecture — chains, cassettes, derailleurs — was designed for human power output in the 200-400 watt range. The Avinox M2S produces 1,500 watts peak. The mismatch is obvious, and DJI has the engineering depth to build something purpose-built: an integrated gearbox, a belt drive, a software-managed CVT that reads terrain and motor output in real time. When they do, another set of western suppliers becomes redundant.

The question isn’t whether Amflow verticalizes further. It’s how fast — and which brand’s supply relationship disappears first.

Scale That Makes the Entire Industry Look Like a Rounding Error

Let’s put the competitive landscape in honest terms, because the numbers are genuinely staggering.

DJI’s revenue is estimated at approximately $11 billion, with 2026 projections pointing toward $14 billion. Trek does roughly $1-2 billion. Giant perhaps $2.5 billion across all categories. Specialized somewhere around $1-1.5 billion.

DJI is larger than every major western bike brand combined. And that’s a drone company — one for which the entire cycling market is, in the grand scheme, a side project.

Now consider: DJI’s drone business was effectively banned from the US market by FCC action in late 2025. They need new growth vectors. They have 14,000 engineers, massive free cash flow, and a company culture built around iteration speed that makes western cycling brands look like they’re operating in geological time.

An industry in financial distress is now squaring off against a company that could fund losses in the cycling category for a decade without material impact to its balance sheet. There is no scenario in which that dynamic ends well for the incumbents, absent a genuine structural advantage they can defend.

What Actually Happens Next

Here’s the trajectory I think is most likely, and I don’t think it’s a comfortable one for most of the brands operating in this space.

In the near term, the 60 brands on the Avinox platform grow their eMTB lines around the motor. Early adopters see genuine consumer enthusiasm — the motor really is that good — and a cohort of brands that hesitated starts rushing to sign on. The performance gap becomes a marketing story that writes itself.

In the medium term, Amflow’s complete bike business scales. Their price points come down as volume increases and vertical integration expands. The “startup premium” evaporates. They’re no longer a niche boutique option for tech-curious buyers — they’re the default reference point for performance-per-dollar in the category.

In the longer term, Amflow moves into adjacent segments: gravel, urban, trekking. This is where Bosch actually makes its real money — not in eMTB, which is a prestige category, but in the millions of European commuter bikes that quietly run on Bosch motors and generate steady, recurring revenue. If Avinox cracks that market, the impact on Bosch is existential. And Bosch is the closest thing the European cycling supply chain has to a technology anchor.

At each stage, the brands that built on Avinox find themselves more dependent, with fewer options, watching their most important supplier eat their market from below.

The Toughest Timing Imaginable

What makes this genuinely alarming — rather than just another competitive challenge — is the timing.

A healthier industry, with flush balance sheets and the appetite for investment, might be able to respond. It would be painful, but you could imagine Bosch doubling its R&D spend, or a consortium of European brands funding a competitive motor program, or private equity backing a challenger drive unit company.

None of that is happening. The industry is in survival mode. R&D budgets are being cut, not expanded. Brands are fighting for cash, not positioning for the next technology cycle. The distributors and retailers who would normally absorb some of the market shock are themselves under enormous pressure.

Into that environment, DJI has arrived with the best motor on the market, a complete bike brand, an unlimited capital position, and a culture that ships product faster than western companies hold quarterly strategy meetings.

The window to respond in any meaningful way is closing fast. And I’m not sure most of the industry has fully registered that it’s open at all.

A Final Thought

Jeff Brines ended his piece with good news for riders and a warning for Bosch, Shimano, and SRAM executives to “start moving faster.”

I’d extend that warning considerably further.

The brands building bikes. The distributors moving them. The retailers selling them. The component manufacturers supplying them. The investors backing them.

The next five years in the eBike segment are going to look nothing like the last five. The disruption that the industry convinced itself was always “coming eventually” is here, backed by a company that dwarfs the entire industry, arriving at the moment the industry is least equipped to absorb the blow.

For riders, yes — your next bike will be incredible.

For the industry? I genuinely don’t know how this ends well for a lot of the players currently in it.