Electric bike market

According to reports, the world's current number one electric vehicle is not an electric car, but an electric bicycle. According to industry expert data, Americans will buy about 500,000 electric bicycles home in 2020. According to data from the Pew Research Center, only 231,000 electric vehicles were sold in the United States during the same period.

Electric bicycle sales have experienced a surge in markets such as the United Kingdom and the United States. From 2019 to 2020, sales of e-bikes in the U.S. rose 145 percent, twice as fast as conventional bikes, according to market research firm NPD Group. The UK e-bike market also grew by 70% last year, with sales reaching 170,000 units, according to market research firm Mintel.

Experts believe that this growth trend has no intention of slowing down. According to Deloitte, global sales of electric bicycles will reach 130 million between 2020 and 2023, a trend that may change the way cities travel.

David Zibo, a visiting scholar at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and an expert in new forms of mobility technology, believes that people's explosive enthusiasm for electric bicycles is the result of three trends emerging at the same time.

The first is the rapid development of lithium batteries. The batteries, which used to power electric vehicles, have become "smaller, more efficient and less expensive" so they can be used in small devices like bicycles. Second, there has been a revival of interest in cycling in cities over the past decade. Third, the emergence of shared bikes (including electric versions) allows people to try them without having to buy them, which has led to an increase in demand. In Norway, which has a national bike network, car use fell when users learned how far electric bikes could get them.

Thanks to these three trends, the rapid growth of the electric bicycle market has become a matter of course.