'A new wave of motorcycling': Kove enters Canada as Chinese brands poised to redefine the market

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Just as Japanese motorcycle brands muscled into North America in the 1950s and '60s, now Chinese brands are coming to do the same.

Kove Moto, which sold its first 120 street-legal motorcycles in Canada this year, is among the latest Chinese motorcycle makers attempting to grab a slice of the Canadian market. Kove is following in the footsteps of CFMoto, another Chinese brand which launched its current motorcycle range in Canada in 2022, following an aborted attempt several years earlier.

"There's a proliferation of [Chinese] brands we've never heard of before, but they seem to be establishing a good record in service, performance and value," said John Cooper, an avid rider and retired motorcycle journalist who spent 30 years on staff at Cycle Canada magazine. Chinese brands such as CFMoto and Kove are poised to redefine the market, he said.

Cooper is putting his money where his mouth is, having purchased a Kove 450 Rally bike for himself. Since taking delivery of the bike in April, he's found it to be robust, neatly crafted and impressively lightweight.

It's a niche type of machine, part dirt-bike, part adventure bike. "If you wanted an equivalent bike you'd probably spend $50,000 for a factory KTM," he said, referring to the brand's 450 Rally Replica. The fact there's nothing else quite like the Kove currently on offer has helped grab some attention for the brand, at least in enthusiast circles.

For the rest of us, Kove Moto needs some introduction. Kove (pronounced ko-vay) is a registered brand of Tibet New Summit Motorcycle Co., Ltd., headquartered on the outskirts of Chongqing, an inland megacity of more than 30 million people in southwestern China.

By contrast, Kove Moto Canada, the brand's official Canadian distributor, is a small family-run business operating out of Carstairs, Alta. (Population: 5,200.)

"We all work there, my stepfather, my sister, my mom and me," said Joshua Bauer, who handles sales and marketing at Kove Moto Canada as well as the family's motorcycle dealership, Alberta Powersports.

In March 2023, the U.S.-based North American distributor for Kove asked the team at Alberta Powersports - a shop they were already doing business with - if the Alberta company wanted to become the Canadian distributor for Kove.

"At first we were pretty hesitant," said Bauer. "It was a new brand, a Chinese brand. There's that stigma around it. But the more research we did, the more familiarized we got with Kove's products, we realized it was the real deal."

Bauer and most of his family are all avid riders. "Once we got our hands on the product, it was all in," he said.

Bauer acknowledged Kove's prices can be, depending on the model, the same or even more than rival bikes from more established brands. But, he said, Kove bike's spec sheets speak for themselves. "It's not a discount brand."

After that first conversation in 2023, it took time to land the bikes in Canada, and longer still to get them certified for road use. That process wasn't completed until October 2024. (Typically, the entire homologation process to get a new bike approved in both the U.S. and Canada takes around 18 months, Bauer explained.)

So far Kove has 12 dealers nationwide, with plans to expand to around 20 by the end of the year. The company's model lineup in Canada consists of two motorcross bikes, two street-legal middleweight adventure bikes - the 800X Pro and 800X Rally - and the 450 rally bike, which is available in both street-legal and off-road versions.

More models are coming soon. Bauer said the company is working on getting Kove's 450RR sport bike and 525X adventure bike homologated for Canada. (The latter looks like one of BMW's popular GS adventure bikes, right down to the colour scheme.)

"It's not just a Chinese factory that's building bikes, these guys are moto enthusiasts," Bauer said of Kove.

Palace intrigue aside, Kove has certainly been playing to an enthusiast audience, putting their bikes to the test in highly competitive motorsport events including the World Superbike Championship and the Dakar Rally. (It was Kove Moto Canada's sponsorship of the lone Canadian rider in this year's Dakar that put the brand on my radar.)

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After selling 120 bikes this year in Canada, the company is aiming to sell 315 to 350 motorcycles in 2026. It's a modest target, even in a relatively small market where annual sales hover around 70,000 new motorcycles and scooters.

"Being such a small company we can, 'live off the scraps,' is how we describe it," Bauer said. "If we hit that 300-bike mark, we're laughing."

The modest sales target and small footprint will certainly help Kove's chances of getting off the ground. But it's a tough time to be launching a new motorcycle brand in Canada, let alone a Chinese one.

Motorcycle sales dropped 22 per cent year-over-year in the first quarter of 2025, according to the industry association Moto Canada.

"To be clear: this decline is almost exclusively due to Canadian consumers feeling nervous about their financial situation due to tariffs," wrote Moto Canada president Landon French in a statement released in April.

If there's good news for Kove and its Chinese peers it's that - unlike the 100-per-cent tariff Canada imposed on Chinese-made electric vehicles - there's currently no special tariff against Chinese motorcycles. Kove imports bikes into Canada directly from China.

The tariff situation is actually worse for companies making bikes in the U.S. (as well as the Canadian dealers who sell them) since Canada imposed a 25-per-cent counter-tariff on U.S.-made motorcycles.

Still, Bauer said Chinese brands have to contend with a "stigma" among some consumers, which is something Kove has inherited as well.

"You know, there are cheap bikes out there. You can get a bike from China for $1,000, or $800. And they kind of built a reputation of being throw-away," he said. Customers come in wary about a potential lack of support when it comes to spare parts or maintenance.

Of course, Chinese-made motorcycles are not exactly new in the Canadian market. Long before the new Chinese brands arrived, established brands including KTM and BMW began assembling bikes in China for global markets. According to Moto Canada, Chinese-made motorcycles currently account for roughly 15 to 20 per cent of all new bikes sold annually in this country.

There was some stigma and politically driven commentary around Japanese bikes back when they were new in North America too, of course.

"It's all somewhat reminiscent of the late '50s/early '60s when the unfamiliar Japanese brands with names we didn't recognize were about to bump the old British brands off the map far sooner than we ever imagined," John Cooper said.

As more Chinese brands hit North American showrooms, he expects it will reshape the market.

"To me, it just heralds a new wave of motorcycling," said Cooper. All that's needed now, he added, is a new generation of younger Canadian buyers willing to get into motorcycling.