E-bike sales are soaring

[FlatSix911]

Electric bicycle sales soar as Giant projects 600,000 e-bike sales this year

If you’ve done a double take recently after seeing an otherwise unassuming cyclist fly past you or up a steep...

electrek.co

It’s true that e-bike sales are growing faster than ever. But what makes the numbers even more dramatic is the fact that pedal bicycle sales are on a continuous decline.

Giant is one of the larger players in the electric bicycle market. In just the first half of the year, the Taiwanese company announced that it sold 290,00 electric bicycles. Now they are expecting to sell another 310,000 e-bikes by the end of the year, estimating that they’ll reach 600,000 units sold for all of 2019.

In fact, during a press briefing at the unveiling of the Yamaha Wabash electric gravel bike, Yamaha’s sales team shared some interesting industry data with Electrek. As it turns out, every single of category of bicycles is witnessing a year-over-year decline in sales – except for gravel bikes and electric bicycles. Which suddenly explains why Yamaha’s new Wabash debuted as an electric gravel bike.

 

[DaveMatthews]

Excellent!
Now if it would only stop raining

 

[Deacon Blues]

Excellent!
Now if it would only stop raining

I'll second that. Here on Vancouver Island (British Columbia) it starts to rain in October and stops in early May.

Personally, I won't buy another 'standard' bike. Maybe it's my age (68), but my next bike will have an electric motor. I do love riding my light carbon road bike, but each year the hills seem to be getting steeper.
Even now if I'm not doing a group ride (everyone rides a light road bike) I usually prefer riding my Pedego Ridge Rider.

 

[Gordon71]

I'm curious to know how many people are using it as a car replacement.

Whenever I need to run an errand that does not require hauling back more stuff than would fit in the panniers. Sadly that's not as often as I would like.

 

[Dewey]

I'm curious to know how many people are using it as a car replacement.

I think it depends where you live, in inner-cities with good public transport, bicycle infrastructure, and easy access to rental cars, it's possible to live without owning a car, several of my colleagues are in that situation some of whom keep a bike in their apartment/garage or use bikeshare or e-scooters to get around and run local errands/shopping/fitness. In the inner suburbs an e-bike or pedal bicycle are more commonly used as a second-car replacement, car-lite I believe is the term used here in the US. Arlington, VA where I live is like that, an inner suburb of Washington, DC, and among the people and families in my neighborhood I know maybe a dozen one-car households like ours who use public transport and occasionally rental cars when necessary plus pedal bicycles or e-bikes for family/transportation cycling, of whom maybe one in four use a cargo e-bike. More commonly I see in our neighborhood people using a regular e-bike and a child trailer/trailer-cycle, in part because of the expense of cargo e-bikes and risk of theft but also because around here single people tend to live in apartments, while families live in older duplexes or garden apartments built in the 1940's without a garage like ours - I have a small bike shed and it's simply more convenient to be able to unhitch and break down a trailer for storage. One family we know live in a large single family home with a garage, they use a minivan and cargo-ebikes so they've been advocating for more bike lanes. Further out in the exurbs on my local cycling online forum there are several commuters who ride into the city from 15-20 miles out, typically they prefer Class 3 e-bikes, but I don't know of any who live car-free.