Does Bosch, Brose and Shimano plan on making their own branded eBikes

[Oski1997]

I‘m new to the bicycle community. I’ve learned a couple of things (I think). The three biggest bicycle manufacturing companies (by revenue) are Giant, Trek and Merida. Giant not only makes the frames for themselves but also for Pinarello, Colnago and Canyon (to name a few). Trek manufactures their Project One bikes in Wisconsin. Merida makes their own bicycle frames and the non-Project One bikes for Trek. Merida also makes Specialized frames, except for (i think) one of their high end road bikes. And finally, Merida makes Cannondale frames.

Then I thought “what about the big MOTOR and BATTERY manufacturers”? I think that would be Bosch ($77 billion) Yamaha ($9.5 billion), Brose ($6.6 billion) and Shimano (3.4 $billion). Please take these figures with a grain of salt (I didn’t read through all of their 10-K reports to find specific motor/battery sales revenue). I just use these raw numbers to give us an idea of the kinds of sales the ebike motor/battery manufacturers have annually.

As of 2018, Yamaha is now making their own branded eBikes. Does anyone know if Bosch, Brose and Shimano also plan to make their own branded bicycles?

 

[Stefan Mikes]

As of 2018, Yamaha is now making their own branded eBikes. Does anyone know if Bosch, Brose and Shimano also plan to make their own branded bicycles?

Yamaha clearly states they are not ready for "the high European standards" to bring their e-bikes to the EU. I doubt Bosch, Brose or Shimano would make their own e-bikes. Competing with their broad base of large OEM customers? Doubtful.

 

[Stefan Mikes]

@Oski1997: The whole matter is pretty complicated. Bosch (similarly to Apple in another area) has their own ecosystem, same as Shimano. Yamaha and especially Brose make "open solutions", enabling OEM e-bike manufacturers provide own solutions (for instance: display, controller, battery, remote). For instance, that makes "full power" Specialized Turbo e-bikes so different from any other Brose equipped e-bikes (for instance Bulls or iZip, etc). Giant uses Yamaha motors but have provided own ecosystem, too (that's why Specialized motors are named "Specialized" and Giant/Liv/Momentum motors are called "SyncDrive"). Specifically, Specialized doesn't even mention Mahle as the maker of the Specialized 1.1 SL motor.

 

[Asher]

No.
A) they didn't do it with manual bikes, and there's nothing about ebikes that really changes the equation dramatically
B) Going into competition with their customers could undermine their business.

I don't have privileged info, so I don't really know. But they already found their distribution niche. Of the three, Shimano and Bosch seem least likely because their respective positions in manual and electric components is already so dominant.

Merida acquiring a motor maker startup seems more plausible, though I'm not sure there are many to pick from.