VIN DIESEL made a fortune playing the American muscle-car driving anti-hero in the “Fast & Furious” films. These days, he’s helping a husband-and-wife team from China get even richer selling electric scooters.

The actor appears as a crooning spy in ads for Yadea Group Holdings Ltd., a maker of Internet-connected two-wheelers that have gained a following in China, and last year opened subsidiaries in Vietnam and Germany.

Demand has soared in recent months as the COVID-19 pandemic forced people to rethink their commutes. That should benefit the two-wheel industry, according to First Shanghai Securities analyst Chen Xiaoxia. Yadea has said that earnings for the first six months of the year should surge by at least 90 percent.

Shares of the Shanghai-based company have risen more than fourfold since a low in March, propelling the fortune of co-founders Dong Jinggui and his wife Qian Jinghong to a combined US$1.9 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The company’s edge comes from its battery technology, Chen said. It uses graphene, a carbon allotrope that Yadea says can charge to 80 percent in just an hour.

The couple founded Yadea in 2001 in Wuxi, a city of about 3.5 million people near Shanghai, after having worked at a motorcycle company for several years. They listed it in Hong Kong in 2016 and together control 67 percent of the firm’s stock.

Profit has climbed annually since 2017 and hit 516 million yuan (US$75 million) last year. The company makes 162 models of electric scooters and bikes, with 90 percent of its revenue coming from the mainland. It also exports to about 80 countries, including the United States and Germany.

Yadea bikes sold for an average of 1,964 yuan in 2019, compared with more than 4,900 yuan for rival Niu Technologies, according to a Huatai Securities note this month. To meet the demand for higher-end scooters, Yadea last year introduced its G5 model that retails for about 8,000 yuan on JD.com.

(SD-Agencies)