In an interview with EqualOcean, Wentao Shi, Head of NAVEE GOLF, discussed the company's strategic rationale for entering the golf industry, explained how it adapted its mobility and robotics technologies for golf courses, and elaborated on why user insights had become the key differentiator in global markets.
Key Quotes from the Interview:
"The demand has always been there — it just hasn't been properly met."
"An ecosystem has to be planned from the start. Without that groundwork early on, it won't come together on its own later."
"So many details that really matter can only be found on the golf course, not in the office."
"What a golf cart should ultimately become is a smart caddie that behaves like a human."
"Chinese companies used to compete overseas on manufacturing and cost. Now, in quite a few niche areas, they have made significant progress in both innovation and technological implementation."
When talking about the overall stage of Chinese companies' global expansion, Wentao Shi said that "we're still in a bonus period, but it's no longer just about cost or exchange rates — it's about how quickly Chinese companies have caught up in innovation and product completeness."
For most people, NAVEE is a smart mobility brand — electric scooters, e-bikes, sold across Europe, the Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Australasia, with offline retail channels and after-sales networks in multiple countries. But starting in 2025, the company moved into a seemingly unrelated space: golf.
NAVEE GOLF launched its Birdie series of smart golf push carts, which gained traction among golf enthusiasts after hitting the market in Mexico and Canada, with sales growing fast.
The product was then launched in the U.S. via its official store and Amazon, and showcased at international exhibitions such as CES, PGA, and JGF, attracting significant attention from professional brands and the media.
Golf push cart: A push cart is an accessory used on the golf course to carry and transport golf bags. Available in manual, electric, or smart-follow formats, it helps golfers reduce physical strain and improve convenience while walking the course.
But what NAVEE really has in mind goes far beyond a push cart. This product line was spun out as an independent division within the group, drawing on years of in-house expertise in battery systems, motor technology, autonomous following, and sensing capabilities built through its robotic mower and vacuum robot lines. The long-term vision is to transform golf into a smarter, more connected ecosystem.
EqualOcean spoke with Wentao Shi, Head of NAVEE's GOLF Division, for an in-depth conversation about the opportunities in smart golf equipment and the company's path to global markets. In Shi's view, what truly drew NAVEE into this market wasn't whether golf is premium enough — it was a clear gap in the industry. There are already plenty of single-product brands out there, but very few players are thinking about it from the angle of a complete smart ecosystem.
This article is based on an exclusive interview conducted by EqualOcean's Global Expansion Research Institute with Wentao Shi, Head of NAVEE's GOLF Division.
01 Why Golf
Before making this decision, NAVEE conducted a round of industry research. At the time, smart following technology was already a hot topic across the AI hardware sector. The team traced that thread into specific use cases and ultimately landed on golf.
Shi told EqualOcean, "We got hold of a number of products on the market and actually used them ourselves. What we found was that almost none of them lived up to consumer expectations. The demand is real, but the existing products hasn't been delivered. That kind of gap — where the need is proven but the product hasn't been figured out — is exactly the window for NAVEE GOLF to step in. The nature of golf also works in our favor. A golf course is a relatively standardized environment — bunkers, tee boxes, greens, clearly defined zones — nothing like the randomness of city streets. When we assessed it as a whole, the technical challenges were real, but far from impossible."
NAVEE GOLF's smart follow feature lets players simply press a button, clip the remote to their belt, and walk freely.
A more critical insight came from the user profile. In Western markets, golf is not a casual pastime — it's a long-term, high-frequency hobby. Many players visit the course three to four times a week, and playing without a caddie is the norm. In that context, a golf push cart is a genuine necessity, and the value of smart following is amplified. It's not just about saving energy — it's about freeing players from having to keep an eye on their cart so they can focus entirely on their swing.
The situation in China is completely different. NAVEE GOLF surveyed over 300 golf courses across the country and found that the vast majority have caddie-protection policies in place, with the standard model being a caddie paired with a four-wheel golf cart. The room for push carts to break through in the domestic market is extremely limited.
NAVEE GOLF's direction has always been clear: the priority is overseas. This judgment is backed by market data. According to third-party research, North America and Europe together account for over 60% of global demand for electric golf push carts in 2025, making them the core markets for this category.
In recent years, many Chinese brands entered overseas markets by leaning on competitive pricing, fast distribution, and rapid channel expansion. The key shift in Western markets now is that prices alone can no longer sustain long-term growth. What matters increasingly is safety liability, certification standards, product reliability, after-sales responsiveness, and the ability to operate locally. In other words, manufacturing capability is still the price of entry, but it no longer automatically converts into market share.
This is why competition in the industry has started to shift from single-point efficiency to system-wide efficiency. Companies used to compete on who could build products faster, ship at lower cost, and expand channels earlier. Now the race is about who can complete regulatory compliance sooner, who can handle after-sales obligations more reliably, and who can bring product, service, distribution, and brand together into a complete loop. expand overseas hasn't changed — what's changed is the underlying logic of how it's done.
02 From Robotic Mowers to Golf Push Carts
Moving from its mobility product line into golf, the first question NAVEE GOLF had to answer was: how much of the group's existing technology could be carried over directly?
The answer turned out to be far more than most outsiders would expect.
First, the three-core electric system — motor, battery, and electronic controls. Micro-mobility products already demand high efficiency from these components, and NAVEE had built up experience across multiple voltage platforms including 36V, 48V, and 72V. The golf push cart currently runs on the 48V platform, which is already among the more advanced in the industry. A higher voltage platform means better efficiency and longer range, and smart push carts require a careful balance between weight and battery life — which happens to be one of the group's existing strengths.
Then there's the following technology, and its origin may come as a surprise: robotic mowers and vacuum robots. One is indoor, the other outdoor, and the differences in setting are obvious, but on closer assessment, the leap isn't as big as it seems.
Shi believes that some competing products on the market still have room to improve when it comes to the stability and user experience of smart following, and the reason comes down to one thing — unreliable tracking. Users buy the product to lighten their load, but if they constantly have to look back to check whether the cart is keeping up, it stops being a helper and becomes a burden.
This was a point Shi came back to repeatedly throughout the interview: the bar in this space isn't whether you have the feature — it's whether the feature actually works.
03 Teaching the Cart to Read the Course
The first-generation product NAVEE GOLF launched in September 2025 was built around UWB smart following. Consumers responded well, but one clear shortcoming quickly surfaced: limited obstacle avoidance. So for the second generation, a vision module had to be added.
UWB: Ultra-wideband technology achieves centimeter-level positioning accuracy (10–30 cm) through techniques such as Time of Flight (ToF), making it well suited for high-precision applications like indoor navigation, asset tracking, and digital car keys.
Shi mentioned that previously, users still had to worry about whether the cart was keeping up. Now, person and cart can truly go about their own business. Voice commands are one of the new features in this generation — with voice control, the cart can travel on its own to a destination set by the user, rather than just following alongside. It can even pick up items from the pro shop. This might sound like a nice extra, but Shi sees it as a shift in direction: the device is starting to understand what the user wants, rather than just passively carrying out instructions.
EqualOcean raised a follow-up question: with more features added, would battery life take a hit? Shi's answer was telling: "You can't only upgrade half the system. For the second generation, we swapped out the brushed motors for brushless ones and improved cell energy density by 30%. The overall weight actually went down, while range efficiency went up. We care just as much about the things users can't see but that quietly shape the whole experience as we do about the things they can."
04 It's the Details That Win Users Over
NAVEE GOLF's overseas customers are primarily based in Europe and North America, with the majority being middle-aged and older. This user profile has had a deep influence on how the team makes product decisions.
Shi brought up a few specific examples:
The runaway problem. Push carts with power assist keep rolling forward if the user lets go of the handle. For people who spend long hours on the course, this is a real pain point. NAVEE GOLF ended up borrowing anti-roll technology from baby strollers and solved the issue entirely. As Shi put it, "Users are very sensitive to details like this. The fix itself isn't complicated, but you'd only spot the problem if you've actually used the product out on the course."
Weight. When Shi visited courses overseas and played rounds himself, he saw players in their nineties still out there on the course. That left a strong impression on him and directly led to the development of an ultra-light model weighing just 4.5 kilograms. In Shi's view, whether it's light enough, easy to carry, and easy to fold isn't just a spec — it's the fundamental question of whether a user can keep using the product for years to come.
Taking the Birdie 3X as an example, it folds with a single press, takes up just 0.15 m³ of space, and fits easily into a car trunk.
The tray table request. Through regular communication with overseas users, the team heard from players who wanted a small tray table on the cart — somewhere to put a drink, a scorecard, or personal items. It sounds trivial, but it's the kind of detail you'd never think of sitting in an office.
On what drives users to buy, Shi drew a distinction: the factors that trigger the purchase and the factors that build the reputation aren't necessarily the same thing. The former is mostly about novelty — smart following, as a feature distinctive enough to catch attention, draws in users who are open to trying something new. The latter kicks in after the product proves itself in real use, spreading through the naturally tight-knit community structure of golf. Golf players have clubs, social circles, and regular playing partners. When one person has a good experience, they recommend it to the people around them — that's the most classic word-of-mouth path in this industry.
05 Full Ecosystem, Full Intelligence
If NAVEE GOLF were simply building a better push cart, the story would more or less end here. But the ambition goes much further.
Shi summed up what NAVEE GOLF is really after in two phrases: full ecosystem, full intelligence. He drew an analogy with the smart home industry, which is already fairly mature — a smart speaker serves as the central hub, connecting air conditioning, lights, fridges, and TVs, making all devices work together.
Golf is actually a natural multi-device setting as well. When players head out for a round, they bring a push cart, a golf cart, a rangefinder, a watch, glasses, sometimes even a simulator. But right now, these devices are almost entirely disconnected from one another — each doing its own thing, with no coordination.
Across the entire golf industry, there are strong brands in push carts, strong brands in rangefinders, strong brands in watches — but no one has truly brought all of these together into a single system. That's a very clear gap.
Shi pointed out that an ecosystem doesn't grow on its own — it has to be planned from the start: which capabilities are shared, which hardware talks to which, which functions live on which device, and what the technology roadmap looks like over the next two to three years. "Without that planning early on, it's nearly impossible for it to come together later. At this stage, NAVEE GOLF isn't going to rush into extending this logic to tennis or other sports. Trying to do too much at once leads nowhere. The priority is to go deep in golf first. If you truly go deep in one setting, the opportunity on its own is already big enough."
06 Where the Smart Push Cart Is Heading
In Shi's view, the ultimate form of the golf experience is a humanized smart caddie — one that can analyze swings, record footage, read emotions, and accompany the player just like a real caddie would. But that's a long-term goal. The reality today is that battery density and electric system efficiency haven't yet reached the level needed to support that kind of product.
His judgment is that before robotics truly matures, smart golf equipment is more likely to evolve as an ecosystem of multiple products — each device in the form best suited to its function, all connected and working together as a complete system.
According to Shi, when the team launched the first-generation product, they had already mapped out a preliminary plan for capability development over the next two to three years. From UWB following to upgraded visual following, course mapping and navigation, gesture recognition and voice commands, all the way to gimbal-mounted cameras for real-time capture and swing replay analysis — the full technology roadmap was largely set by the time the first product shipped.
07 The Rules of Going Global Are Changing, but Opportunity Remains
NAVEE GOLF's sales are currently focused on European and North American markets, with Australia and New Zealand as key regions for expansion, and Japan and South Korea to follow gradually.
External pressures are real. Shi spoke about the challenges of tariffs and supply chains, particularly the shifts in the North American market. In his view, the real difficulty isn't the rules themselves — it's how fast they change. Companies need to keep finding ways to adapt under rapidly shifting conditions while maintaining product competitiveness. That balance is hard, but non-negotiable.
On the after-sales front, NAVEE GOLF has already built out a solid foundation. Shi noted, "European and American consumers care a great deal about after-sales support, and the dealer channels we work with take service systems just as seriously."
NAVEE GOLF currently has after-sales service locations across major European countries, with plans to expand to 20 to 30 locations in North America. These aren't just repair centers in a physical sense — they're localized support systems designed to respond to user issues right away.
On the broader stage of Chinese companies going global, Shi said he believes we're still in a window of opportunity, but one that's no longer just about cost and exchange rates. It's increasingly driven by how fast Chinese companies have caught up in innovation and product completeness. "Overseas consumers used to see Chinese products as mid-to-low-end. That's clearly changed in recent years. It's not just manufacturing that's gotten more competitive — Chinese companies are pushing just as hard on innovation and technical execution. In some areas, they're already starting to overtake their Japanese, Korean, European, and American counterparts."
As for companies that are serious about getting global expansion right, Shi offered one piece of advice: understand your users. The habits of Western consumers are completely different from those in China. If you're going to enter that market, you have to go to where the action is, spend time with users in real-world settings, and figure out what they actually need.
08 Conclusion
Currently, golf isn't the most crowded space out there. But precisely because it's vertical enough, high-frequency enough, and its users care deeply about the experience, it turns out to be a setting worth rethinking from the ground up.
NAVEE GOLF didn't enter by inventing a new category from scratch. Instead, it recombined capabilities the group already had and aimed them at a clear gap in the industry.
From the first generation to the second, every step along this path was mapped out before the first product even shipped. And that may be the most important lesson this company offers when it comes to golf: going global isn't about transplanting a domestic product overseas, and building an ecosystem isn't about lining up a few products side by side. The real opportunity is always hiding in the places others have noticed but never properly followed through on.