Electric vehicles and transportation will be dominated by a revolution that will upend travel as we currently understand it. Even with Tesla’s world changing vehicle fleet, electric bikes are going to quickly overtake these sales and become the forerunner in EV sales.
Electric bikes have been struggling for years to shrug off its ‘niche / luxury’ label it has obtained in the UK. Europe has much more readily expected electric bikes as a mode of transport with 2.2 million units sold in 2018, around 980,000 of those in Germany alone (statista.com). And the electric bike market has only continued to grow. With improvements in lithium-ion technology, motor power efficiency and a decreasing in pricing and a global push in the direction of carbon-neutrality, we can only expect further growth. Deloitte, which released it’s predictions in December, says it expects 130 million e-bikes to be sold globally between 2020 and 2023. It also noted that “the number of e-bikes on the roads will easily outpace other e-vehicles by the end of next year.”
That dramatic increase in sales heavily relies on a cultural shift in the mentality of consumers.
Deloitte further predicts a 1 percentage rise in the proportion of people who bike to work from 2019 to 2022. While this may not appear much, given the time and the low base number, these tens of millions of additional bike journeys will mean a significant impact to our environment.
While the UK and America still tend to see electric bikes as recreational luxury items, Europe consider them as legitimate transportation options. In the US and Canada, averagely around 1 percent commutes by bike today, however is is higher in the UK. Around 5-6% of the population aged 16+ use their bike at least once a week for transport purposes. (https://www.cyclinguk.org/statistics)
Electric bikes sales is one of the fasting growing markets but still only represents a tiny portion of sales with 70,000 out of 2.5 million being sold in the UK in 2018, of which. In the US Electric bike sales rose by an terrifying 91% from 2016 to 2017 and continued to rise another 72% from 2017 to 2018 to an astounding $143.4 million, according to the market research firm NPD Group.
Bikes can be reconfigured to carry children, groceries, or even local deliveries with many companies creating unique solutions to these solutions, such as the Babboe cargo bikes, or the Italwin SUV
If cities begin to make the necessary changes to encourage more people to bike — such as creating an infrastructure of protected bike lanes, offering safe storage and creating zones with restrictions on cars - It is very possible that e-bikes can retain the top spot as the forerunner in electric transportation.