The challenge of declining bicycle sales in the world's leading cycling nation

A few days ago I quote tweeted this graph from Datagraver on twitter with a comment that "Sadly, cycling is dying in the Netherlands." The responses to this tweet were largely defensive and many people clearly didn't understand what I meant, so let's look deeper at the bicycle market in the Netherlands and consider what the consequences could be for cycling in this country with lower bicycle sales.

Shrinking sales don't mean an instant reduction in the bicycle fleet. This drop in bicycle sales is a leading indicator of a problem which will become apparent in the next few years.

How many bicycles are there in the Netherlands

The total number of bicycles in the Netherlands is currently reported to be about 23 million. That's about 1.3 bikes per person. This figure is of course pushed upward by all the people who own many bicycles, including pretty much everyone who I know, and pulled downward by people with no bicycle at all.

There are actually quite a lot of people who don't have a bicycle in the Netherlands, about a fifth of the population in total. People without bikes include babies too young to cycle, some people with disabilities and some older people who can no longer ride a bike or trike. There are also people even in this country who do not cycle by choice. In addition there's inequality in our society just like that of other countries and for some people the price even of a second hand bicycle is a barrier. A nationwide scheme tackles this to some extent by providing free of charge donated bikes to children.

The sales decline and the pandemic's effect on sales

You'll note from the graph that sales of conventional bicycles have declined to about a quarter of the level which they had 20 years ago, while sales volume of electric bicycles have grown from more or less nothing to a figure which slightly exceeded conventional bicycle sales in last year's sales figures. Those two trends are obvious without concerning ourselves with the two pandemic years, 2020 and 2021.

Both 2020 and 2021 were unusual because of the pandemic. Bicycle shops in 2020 were reporting record sales because of lockdown cycling, while in 2021 they were complaining about not being able to get stock because of supply chain issues.

In the year 2000 around 1.5 M bicycles were sold to a population of 16.3 M people. By 2021 only around 445000 bicycles were sold to a slightly higher population of 17.1 M. We've gone from one  bicycle sale per 11 people to around one bike per 39 people. i.e. Sales have reduced to a quarter of their previous level. Of course, e-bike sales have increased and if we include the e-bikes in the sales figures that makes a combined total of 923000 bikes sold in 2021, or one per 19 people. That's still a halving of the total number of bikes sold per person per year.

The average price of a new bicycle

As I reported before, the Dutch spend more on average on a new bicycle than people of other countries and this has increased rapidly. The average price paid for a new bicycle in 2008 was €603 but last year's average price was €1627 (vs. about 800 pounds in the UK and about $700 in the USA). There's a simple reason why Dutch people are willing to spend more: Because they use bikes more than those who live in other countries they spend more on their bicycles with the expectation of getting plenty of use from them.

The average bicycle price has increased faster in recent years because of the switch from normal bicycles to e-bikes. Bike shops have been perfectly happy with this outcome because the decrease in sales volumes is more than masked by a higher profit margin due to the increase in the average value of a sale. If you've ever wondered why so many bicycle manufacturers and dealerships in the early twentieth century became motorcycle or car manufacturers and dealerships by half way through the 20th century, there's the answer. They too found that they could make higher profits by selling motorized vehicles at a higher price. Cycling declined while few people took much notice of what was happening.

But there's an issue with this. Not everyone can afford to buy a new bike, especially at the average price paid for a bicycle in this country.

Second and third hand non-electric bikes provide the backbone of the bicycle fleet.

Many second hand bicycle sales are made by bicycle shops which take trade-ins of people's older bikes when they buy a new bicycle. Sales to third and later users are largely private. The value of a bicycle drops as it ages and each time it is sold to a new owner a bicycle typically also passes to a different demographic.

Even in the year 2000 with about 1.5 M bikes being sold each year, bikes of up to five years old made up only a third of the total fleet in use. i.e. two thirds of the population were riding bicycles which were over five years old, well out of guarantee and possibly on their third owner.

Bicycles sold in 2000 were on average used for about about 14 years. That was not a maximum age, but an average. Obviously some bikes are scrapped earlier for various reasons and others last far longer. This is a simple calculation: 14 years had to be the average life expectancy for a new bicycle in 2000 because with sales of 1.5 million bicycles a year and a bicycle population of around 21 million we were replacing about 1/14th of the bicycle fleet every year.

In 2021 with around 1 M bikes sold per year (normal bikes and e-bikes combined) and a total bicycle population of 23 M we now need our bicycles to last on average 23 years just to maintain the current fleet size. Unfortunately the type of bicycle being sold makes this difficult if not impossible. Half the bicycles being sold now are e-bikes and e-bikes are not practical for a second or third owner to maintain when they are over 5 years of age. 

While bicycles built of standard parts can be maintained more or less forever, manufacturers often no longer sell unusual and specialized parts of bikes after a few years, and this is especially problematic with e-bikes because even when they are available the price of batteries, controllers (the electronic parts between battery and motor including the display), motors and other expensive parts is often too high for a second or third owner and there is usually no cheaper substitute alternative available. Sometimes a second hand part can be used, but then you're stripping one bike to keep another going. New buyers are covered by a warranty but no warranty claim can be made by second or third owners so they have to cover the full cost of any repair and these parts often add up to cost more than the second hand value of an older e-bike. Because of this problem, we can expect that though e-bikes currently sell at a rate of half a million per year their shorter lifespans mean that they will only ever be able to contribute about three million bikes to the total fleet while the rest of the fleet will eventually have to be made up from the other half million normal bikes which were sold in the same year. But that unfortunately means that maintaining the current fleet level of 23 M bikes requires that normal bikes must have an unrealistically long average lifespan of around 40 years.

Lower sales mean a slowly reducing number of available bicycles

Shrinking sales and the type of bicycle being bought by customers of new bicycles will both affect the availability of usable second and third hand bicycles in the future. It will take a few years for this to be obvious because only a small proportion of the fleet is replaced each year and if they can't find what they wanted, most people can just hold onto a bicycle for a bit longer. But this will mean that the availability of rideable bicycles decreases over subsequent years.

The effect of e-bikes on the Dutch population

While in other countries the e-bike is often perceived a transport mode which is preferable to a car, it's quite clear that in the Netherlands with our rapidly growing car ownership and usage and plummeting sales of normal bicycles, that e-bikes are being used in place of human powered bicycles.

The reported distance cycled per year by an average Dutch person has remained constant for decades at just under 900 km per year, which is under a fifth of the distance that we would all have to cycle in order to exercise enough to maintain good health by riding bikes alone. Substituting e-bike kms for human powered kms only means that the Dutch population gets less exercise. A particularly worrying trend is the uptake in e-bikes amongst the young. It's now not at all unusual to see school children who barely turn the pedals by themselves at all on their way to school and back, reducing the potential for cycling to establish a good exercise habit from a young age.

There is also then a problem that these e-bikes are more expensive and less durable, which makes cycling a lot less democratic than it used to be. Parents who once struggled to provide a bicycle for their child are now under pressure to provide an e-bike instead.

Complacency doesn't solve any problem

Unfortunately these concerns are not being discussed, but are instead being swept under the carpet.

Cycling is a fragile mode of transport which if it is to continue at a relatively high rate, as is still fortunately the case currently in the Netherlands, will need protecting against competition from motor vehicles of all sizes including the small electric vehicles with which some people are currently enamoured.

There is much to lose and we're doing little to protect cycling against the threats that it faces. You can see this even with the current response to rising fuel prices due to the Russian attack on Ukraine. Our government immediately announced huge decreases in taxation for motorists, which ensure that driving remains competitive even as it boosts trade with an aggressive nation and continues to fuel the climate crisis, while they've done nothing at all to encourage people out of their cars, and in particular they've not encouraged people to ride a bicycle instead of driving which would be the most effective way to do some good to solve both those problems.

If we don't want cycling to decline in the Netherlands then we need to invest more in it. The main thing that the Netherlands needs now is wider, smoother, cycle-paths which take more direct routes and improve the competitiveness of cycling with other transport modes.

Things that don't explain the drop in bicycle sales

People in the twitter thread repeatedly made the following suggestions to try to explain the decline in cycle sales and it's probably worth repeating here why none of them explain the decline in sales:

It's not the annoying shared mopeds which litter
the sidewalks while waiting for someone to drive
a car to them and swap the battery either. There
have long been a small number of mopeds in NL

The decline in sales is not explained by SwapFiets, a company which provides a hire service to about 150000 cyclists or roughly 1% of the total fleet. I see it as an expensive way to ride a cheap bike but some people clearly do like their service and that's fine, but the numbers just are not there to explain a decline in bicycle sales.

It's not explained by the popularity of OV-Fiets as while that system is one of the largest bike share systems in the world it has only about 20000 bicycles, or about 0.1% of the total fleet. To an even greater extent than with SwapFiets, the numbers are far too low to make an appreciable difference.

It's also not explained by a reduction in theft. The rate of theft has dropped a little over the last twenty years, but this never really had much of an effect on the fleet size and a reduction in theft doesn't affect this either. Around half a million bicycles are reportedly stolen each year in the Netherlands. A lot of bikes, but a small fraction of the fleet size. Some stolen bicycles are vandalized and become unusable but the majority are either kept by the thief or sold to someone else who continues to ride them, so theft doesn't actually take many bicycles out of the fleet.

It's not explained by cycles becoming more durable. Actually, the opposite has happened. 50 year old steel framed bicycles with standard parts can still be repaired with inexpensive parts but the move to more exotic frame materials, more complex gear and braking systems made maintenance more difficult, and electric assist then had an even greater effect making many modern bicycles far less durable and less economical to keep in service. When people ask me if I can provide replacement batteries, controllers and motors for older (5 year +) e-bikes it's almost always the case that they are either no longer available at all or that if they are available then they're are far too expensive compared with the residual value of the bike. A replacement battery at €550 (that's the retail price of the only battery that is available today from one of our suppliers, which fits only a small minority of e-bikes) costs €100 more than the average price paid for a relatively new and expensive second hand bike bought from a bicycle shop, let alone the price of an average older bike sold privately. So while simple repairs to e-bikes are possible, more complex ones can't be justified. This is what leads to e-bikes being scrapped after quite short useful lives.

It's not explained by market saturation either. While enthusiasts can keep traditionally built bicycles in operation for decades while spending very little to do so, the general public does not do this. There's no sentimentality. If the bike is now worth less than the parts and labour for repair then the bicycle is usually scrapped. In the Netherlands, as explained above, bicycles last on average around 14 years before they need a repair which is too expensive and that's why sales of 1.5 million bicycles a year are necessary in order to maintain a static fleet size.

Update April 2024
Unfortunately, given two years of extra data, we can see that bicycle sales continue to decline, with sales having dropped by about a third since two years ago, to about a fifth of the level required to maintain the required static bicycle fleet size for mass cycling in the Netherlands.

At this point, with this low level of sales, we would need each new bicycle sold to last for sixty year on average just to maintain the fleet size, and that's completely unrealistic. Bicycles never had anything like that long an average lifespan, and modern bicycles, with more complex gearing, suspension forks and frames not made of steel, do not last as long as the simpler designs which made up most sales 40 years ago.

As a result, the pool of usable (mostly second hand) bicycles is now shrinking. As the average age of remaining bicycles gets older and they become un-repairable, there are fewer newer ones available to replace them. This results in shrinkage of the bicycle fleet and will inevitably mean that people cannot cycle so much as they used to. This is tragic for very many reasons.

If you need parts for a traditionally built bicycle then you're in luck. If you need parts for an unusual bicycle or to convert a less practical machine to be better for everyday use I can probably also help you. If you're looking for parts for an e-bike I certainly will help you if I can, but it may not be possible to find what you need. Please do ask, though.

Riding e-bikes does not lead to health benefits

A recent study ("Transport mode choice and body mass index: Cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence from a European-wide study" by Evi Dons and others) compared the effect of different modes of transport on the BMI of thousands of European commuters. Each participant provided details of their height, weight and age as well as their mode of transport, followed by a second survey 18 months later asking the same questions. The effect of different modes of transport on BMI could therefore be compared and the effect on body weight due to daily exercise related to mode of transport was ranked:

1. Riders of normal bicycles, powered by human muscles alone. These participants had the best score, achieving relatively low BMI.
2. Pedestrians were in second place. Walking is beneficial for the body, but walked journeys tend to be extremely short due to the time taken to cover distance so this limits the overall benefit.
3. Users of public transport came in third. Almost all users of public transport get exercise walking to bus stops or train stations.
4. Motor cyclists score similarly to people who use public transport.
5. Riders of e-bikes came in second to last.
6. Drivers of cars took the last place, with the highest BMI.

E-bike parked on the street in Assen. Note that the top gear is
selected. Almost all parked e-bikes are the same. Users select
top gear and maximum assistance from the motor, resulting
in so little effort possible being required from the rider.

It was noted by the researchers that walking or running even to a bus stop burns more calories than hopping onto a bike with a motor immediately outside the door. This is why even travelling on public transport gave more exercise than an e-bike.

Participants who swapped from driving to cycling during the study lost weight. For men, this weight was loss averaged 0.75 kg while women lost a little less.  On the other hand, the BMI outcome for e-bike riders, motorcyclists and car drivers in this study is extremely close. Using a motorised mode of transport does not give a health benefit.

Conclusion
E-bikes can genuinely be of assistance for people who are less active due to age or health problems as they allow those people to remain more mobile than might be the case without a motor, but it shouldn't be a surprise that the health benefits of cycling disappear if you fit a motor to a bicycle. The exercise benefits of pedalling are lost when you're no longer pushing the pedals hard.

If you're a healthy and able human then an e-bike is as bad for your health as any other motorized vehicle such as a motorbike or a car. We each need to exercise on the order of 30 minutes a day just to get enough exercise to remain healthy. On a human powered bicycle that equates to riding around 5000 km a year.

Update 13 September
This blog post does nothing but report on the study linked at the top. The scope of the study was changes in BMI due to using different modes of transport and the resulting personal health benefits, if any, which resulted. A few people have responded by telling me that they exercise while riding their e-bike. That's great but it has nothing much to do with the study. Neither the study authors or myself ever claimed that it was impossible to exercise while riding an e-bike.  This relatively long term study suggests that, on average when considering thousands of people's behaviour, those who choose an e-bike to make their journeys do not get significant exercise while those who ride human powered bicycles do get significant exercise.

Other effects such as local air pollution or CO2 footprint of different modes of transport are beyond the scope of the study.

Several people have criticized my use of the term "health benefits" in the title of this piece as if this didn't come from the study itself. In fact, it was taken directly from the conclusion at the end of the abstract: "Conclusions: Our analyses showed that people lower their BMI when starting or increasing cycling, demonstrating the health benefits of active mobility." It's quite clear that being active is the key. Also note that "cycling" in this case refers to human powered bicycles. The same health benefit was not found for riding an e-bike and the inference is that many people who ride e-bikes are significantly less active than those who ride normal bicycles.

The type of e-bike which the study refers to is a 25 km/h maximum assisted speed pedelec. Anything else is not a legal e-bike and would fall outside the scope of the study. You have to turn the pedals to make the assistance work on these, but you don't necessarily have to push the pedals very hard so it is possible to select top gear and do the minimum of work.

Average speeds of Dutch cyclists. There's not much of a
workout to be had even on an unassisted bike at 12 km/h.
You get less exercise if going barely faster with a motor.
Source: Mobiliteitsbeeld 2017 / KiM

Why does rider health not always benefit from riding an e-bike?
We can only speculate on this subject because there is no data. I suggest that it comes down to habit as much as anything else. In the past people have suggested changes of behaviour such as that drivers of cars could improve their health by, for example, parking their cars one km from work and running the last kilometre. A few people might do things like this, but the majority of car commuters drive all the way to their place of work as that is most convenient for them. I suggest a similar situation arises with e-bike riders: i.e. many could well begin with the intention of pushing the pedals harder, but they slowly find that it makes little difference to their journey time whether they work hard or let the battery do the work so it's easy to fall into doing less.

There are many e-bikes in the Netherlands and it is clear from watching how people ride these bikes that very many riders take the option of riding with an extremely low cadence in top gear and letting the motor take the strain. That the speeds of e-bikes are barely greater than the speeds of unassisted bikes supports this argument.

E-bikes for children ?
Dutch children have historically scored well for low obesity and good well-being in comparison with children from other nations. This comes in no small part due to the exercise of everyday cycling, to school and back, to visit friends and for other purposes. School children are increasingly using e-bikes are increasingly being given to school children, and manufacturers have been happy to push this demand, providing lower cost e-bikes for children (from €1200) and some manufacturers have gone as far as to suggest that the majority of children will have electric bikes within a few years. A child who is barely pushing the pedals will not get as much exercise as his classmates who provide all their own energy. I am not the first person to note that the relatively good fitness of Dutch people could be undermined by e-bikes.

Am I some kind of anti e-bike monster ?
Some of the more bizarre responses which I've received have suggested that I'm either part of the car lobby or that I'm part of the bicycle lobby. Neither is the case. I've simply told you the result of a study.

In the Netherlands, where I live, there are many classes of vehicles which use the cycle-paths. They do this mostly without causing significant problems for one-another, except in some places where the infrastructure is inadequate. These vehicles include, but are not limited to:

• normal bicycles
• racing bicycles
• recumbents
• cargo bikes
• e-bikes (25 km/h, as considered by the study)
• e-cargo bikes (sometimes quite large for kindergarten use)
• mopeds limited to 25 km/h
• electric mopeds limited to 25 km/h.

In rural areas they are joined by similar classes of electric and internal combustion engine vehicles limited to 40 km/h. All these vehicles have been getting along quite well for a long time in the Netherlands.

I don't personally want an e-bike because it would not benefit me, but it doesn't concern me at all that other people ride them. That's their choice.

25 km/h e-bikes have a similar effect on other users of cycle-paths to 25 km/h mopeds, especially the electric versions which don't produce air pollution or noise. i.e. they don't cause a significant problem to other users of cycle-paths.

Your laws on e-bikes may be different. That's beyond the scope of this blog post and the study.

Isn't it the same as gearing/aerodynamic improvements/lighter components on a normal bike?
It's a popular line of argument to suggest that someone who is perceived as being "against" e-bikes would also argue against other improvements to bicycles. This is not a logical argument.

Any improvement to a bicycle which improves its efficiency will indeed allow the rider to travel a little further and/or faster for the same effort, but all the energy required to power that bicycle will still come from the rider.

Adding a motor to a bicycle has a very different effect: It makes pedaling to some extent optional. A modern pedelec requires the rider to turn the pedals, but it does not require them to push the pedals with any significant force. In the Netherlands there are hundreds of thousands of e-bikes. They are not used to travel significantly faster than non-assisted bikes, their riders just do less work. People who switch to an e-bike almost always get less exercise as a result.

No-one ever says "since I added an aerodynamic seat-post to my racing bike I've been able to ride to work without sweating", but plenty of people will tell you that their e-bike allows them to reach their destination without working up a sweat. That is made possible because the motor did the vast majority of the work.

The speed-pedelec of the 1970s. A friend of mine had one of
these. Did he pedal it? Of course not. Credit/rights: wikipedia

We've been here before
Ever since the invention of bicycles, people have added motors to them to increase speed or reduce the effort required of the rider. You can see this even from the etymology of words such as motorbike, moped, pedelec, e-bike, bromfiets, snorfiets. Several of these types of motorized bicycles have pedals.

How often do you see someone actually pedal a moped ? Often these pedals are designed only to meet a legal requirement to have pedals. It's actually easier not to bother with them. People who buy mopeds intend to use them as powered vehicles. The same is largely true for e-bikes. While it is possible to exercise on an e-bike, many owners use their electrically assisted bikes as if they are small motorbikes, putting in the minimum effort required to turn the pedals so that the motor operates.

More supporting evidence
Manufacturers of e-bikes regularly claim that by riding an e-bike you can make your journey while sweating less than you would if riding a human powered bicycle. This is always an indication that you will exercise less because you are required to put less energy through the pedals. A study sponsored by Shimano, a manufacturer of e-bike motors, lists amongst other results that the average rider produced only 1/3rd as much sweat, that their heart rate was lower by 63 beats per minute and that their body temperature was raised 0.9 C less by riding an e-bike rather than cycling. These things are presented as a positive outcome, but they're all actually indicators of how much exercise is taken away from the rider if they use an e-bike rather than a human powered bicycle.

See also my previous blog post about how pushing e-bikes won't result in mass cycling. The benefits for individuals and society that result from mass cycling come about when safe infrastructure is provided which encourages cycling. The answer is not a different type of bike, especially not one which doesn't require the user to push the pedals hard to make progress.

Pushing e-bikes will not result in mass cycling

15-20 years ago the most common objections heard to the idea that better infrastructure was required to enable mass cycling came from people who promoted training of cyclists and vehicular cycling. It was claimed that if enough people could be trained to cycle amongst motor vehicles then no cycling infrastructure was required. Decades have passed and of course no such result was ever seen because the problems which faced people cycling had not been resolved. Meanwhile, those places which built better cycling infrastructure have seen improvements in cycling modal share. The calls for training and vehicular cycling have become much quieter in recent years, but similar calls are now being made for another related idea: That take-up of e-bikes will result in mass cycling despite conditions on the roads not having been improved. This idea has no more validity than the claims made 20 years ago.

If you take someone who is scared to cycle because of the danger of traffic and give them a bicycle they are unlikely to take up cycling just because they now have a bicycle. I pointed out years ago that "a shortage of bicycles was never the reason for the low cycling rate of London" but this applies worldwide. Millions of bicycles gather dust in sheds around the world because their owners don't find riding them on the local streets to be appealing at all.

If you take someone who is scared to cycle because of the danger of traffic and give them a bicycle with a motor, the reaction is very likely to be the same. The source of the fear has not been addressed by adding a motor to the bicycle so they'll still be unlikely to take up cycling.

Dutch parents let their children cycle right into city centres
because it is safe to do so on cycle-paths, not because they
have motorised bicycles.

Parents who are not happy to see their young children ride bicycles on roads filled with motor traffic will be no more enthusiastic about them doing the same thing with a motor on their bike.

Pensioners who are currently scared to cycle on busy roads won't suddenly gain enthusiasm because someone has given them a motorised bicycle.

People with disabilities who use hand cycles or other mobility devices but can't travel far with them because they do not feel safe on the streets are not suddenly going to feel safe to put themselves in front of motor vehicles because they have been given a motor.

Proponents of e-bikes often point to studies which often don't say what they think they say.

A Danish study:
There's a Danish study which is sometimes claimed to show an "11% increase" in cycling due to e-bikes but of course the reality isn't quite like that headline. The study involved 120 people from a city of 61000 who volunteered to be part of a study about the potential of e-bikes. 80 took part in the after study analysis. Of those, 45% claimed they cycled more after they were provided with an e-bike (55% said they cycled the same or less). The 11% increase in cycling which was observed was within the 80 people who chose to take part because they were already interested in e-bikes. That some people who thought they wanted an e-bike turned out really to want an e-bike should surprise no-one. What's more, it's important to note that because these people lived in Denmark they were already in a country which has relatively developed cycling infrastructure and a relatively high cycling modal share because of that infrastructure. They have somewhere safe to ride their e-bikes. This is not a result which has any relevance to a country which does not have cycling infrastructure.

An American study:
There is also an American survey which is popular amongst e-bike enthusiasts, the National Institute for Transportation and Communities North American Survey of Electric Bicycle Owners NITC-RR-1041. A popular website article claims that this survey proves that "e-bikes are getting more people out of their cars". This initially seemed more interesting than the Danish study because it's a study from a place which has little to no cycling infrastructure and great increases in cycling were claimed. If those findings could be translatable to other countries which lack infrastructure that would be very interesting indeed. But I've now read the report and unfortunately there are many problems which arise from it. I will go into these problems below:

Note that while some website headlines are dramatic they're quite loosely connected with the report itself which uses more reasonable language. I suggest that it's important to read the report itself to understand what the survey was and what the results mean. Methodology affects results. The authors are candid and honest about the scope of their survey. They do not claim that it is impartial and nor do they claim that the results can be extrapolated to the population at large. This survey was supported by e-bike manufacturers financially as well as with "input, feedback and efforts on the project to make sure it was successful." The people surveyed were all people who already own e-bikes and over 80% of respondents had owned their e-bike for less than two years when they responded to the survey. We can therefore expect new owners' delight with their new purchase to be reflected in the results.

This survey of 1800 people targeted a self-selected group of people who were found "through e-bike blogs and forums, multiple social media platforms, manufacturer and retailers’ e-mailing lists, and cards left on e-bikes throughout the Portland, OR, area" and as such we can expect many enthusiasts amongst the respondents. The authors don't try to deceive but acknowledge the limitations of their survey. They admit that respondents were not selected randomly and that findings might not be representative even of the whole population of e-bike owners, let alone the population at large.

None of this is a criticism. The report authors are quite clear about what they've done and by presenting their data as they have, they have given an insight into North American e-bike owners. I do, however, criticise some of the websites which have published dramatic headlines based on the survey and some of the people who have taken those headlines and made yet more dramatic claims because the results of this survey have been taken out of context.

It should be noted that most of the e-bikes used by respondents to this survey are too powerful to be recognised as e-bikes in most countries. Only 6% of respondents have e-bikes on which assistance is available only up to the 25 km/h which applies for an assisted bicycle in the EU. 94% of respondents have e-bikes which are more powerful than that. i.e. most of these e-bikes would be classified as "speed pedelecs" in Europe - number plates are required and riders must wear helmets. While only 6% of respondents have the slower EU legal e-bikes, a greater number (7%) have bikes on which the motors are so powerful and can push their riders at such speeds that in Europe they couldn't even be speed pedelecs, but would have to be registered as motorbikes. As such, this study's application to many countries is already limited as it mostly concerns itself mostly with a completely different class of vehicle to that which we would recognise as a legal assisted e-bike in Europe.

The limitations of self-reporting are also exposed. While more than half of respondents claim to be of "very good or excellent health", only a quarter of respondents say that they do even 30 minutes of moderate exercise per day, as recommended widely as a minimum required for good health. 3/4 of e-bike owners do not take 30 minutes of even moderate exercise a day and therefore also cannot be cycling for 30 minutes a day. The most common maximum speed of assistance is 20 mph, suggesting that the distance covered even by most of the respondents who actually do take 30 minutes of exercise per day will be somewhat less than 10 miles (16 km) while most respondents will cover somewhat less distance than this. This puts the report's claim of an "impressive decrease in vehicle miles traveled" in some doubt.

Leading question: Why didn't you cycle before you
had an e-bike ? Choose from one of these answers.

Though the most common reason why people do not cycle is the fear of motor traffic, the multiple choice question which asked about why people didn't cycle before they got an e-bike did not include that as a response. Instead, people were led to give other responses such as that distances were too long for cycling, that hills made cycling difficult or that it was difficult to carry things on a bike. Some respondents specified "other" and then wrote this themselves but it is very likely that this most important reason for not cycling was under-reported due to the design of this question.

The study goes some way to address this by including the following passage, but because it's not an answer to a question it doesn't appear in the hastily written summaries which have appeared on websites elsewhere: "Throughout open-ended responses, e-bike users often expressed insufficient bicycle infrastructure as a significant barrier to riding more (for both standard bicycles and e-bikes), as one participant states, “I don't always have safe infrastructure to get where I need to go. [If that is the case] Then I drive” (anonymous respondent). Some of these barriers to riding a standard bicycle cannot be solved by switching to an e-bike;"

Odd uses for e-bikes
The survey results include many surprising statements from e-bike riders about ways in which they benefit from their bikes which are in fact ways of compensating for poor social policy, poor town planning and poor road/cycle-path infrastructure. Here are some examples:

At least one respondent uses their e-bike to address a social safety issue: “I ride through several homeless camps on my eighteen mile trip. My e-bike gives me a sense of security knowing that I will have the energy/power to get out of the area if I feel threatened or fear for my safety.” This should have been addressed through a combination of a more humane social policy which addressed the issue of homelessness combined with better town planning.

Another says that an e-bike allows overcoming a different problem due to poor town planning: “I live in the suburbs now, so the same errands are much longer distances. An e-bike makes it possible for me to continue to use a bike instead of a car.” Local errands ought to be over local distances. Dutch suburbs are designed to include facilities and encourage cycling.

Some report using their e-bikes to take longer routes than they would otherwise because by doing so the rider can experience less vehicular traffic. i.e. they're compensating for the lack of good cycling infrastructure where they live. Cycling infrastructure should always enable taking the shortest possible route in safety.

Some respondents claim that being able to ride at high speed enhances safety alongside faster vehicles, again compensating for poor infrastructure. Being able to ride as part of the motor traffic is aligned closely with the failed vehicular cycling ideas (it's a strategy for surviving a hostile environment but not a way to create mass cycling). This claim is similar to a popular claim made by drivers of cars that being able to break the speed limit results in better safety, but there is little evidence to support that. Higher speeds are almost always linked to more danger, regardless of the vehicle so I am skeptical that this would work differently for e-bikes. Note that the Dutch experience is the reverse. Pensioners have taken up 25 km/h assisted cycles in quite large numbers to allow them to continue a lifetime of everyday cycling using the extensive country-wide grid of safe cycling infrastructure which they already used on a normal bike. Despite the safety of the infrastructure design and their relatively small increase in speed to a maximum of 25 km/h, the extra speed, weight and slight unpredictability of assisted bicycles has resulted in a surprisingly large increase of injuries and fatalities to older people due to a rise in single rider collisions.

Mopeds and motorbikes
Unsurprisingly, most of the respondents report conflict with motor vehicles. This is a problem for anyone riding a two wheeler in traffic, powered or not). Motorcyclists were using the term SMIDSY (Sorry Mate I Didn't See You) to refer to the incidents in which drivers claimed not to have seen a motorcycle some years before cyclists picked it up. Let's remember that the e-bikes in this US survey are much faster than those which are legal elsewhere.

There's nothing new about making ever faster powered bicycles. People have found ways to put engines and motors onto bicycles thereby transforming them into mopeds and motorcycles for more than a century. People who required something like a bicycle but with a motor attached have been able to legally buy and use those vehicles for more than a century.

Modern e-bikes which assist up to 25 km/h are a new and special case in that their speed has purposefully been made compatible with normal cyclists going about their everyday business and in that the assistance is always relative to force on the pedals. In the Netherlands, slightly faster mopeds are much less popular than bicycles (powered or not) and are commonly considered to be a nuisance to cyclists.

What has been seen in Europe is that people who in the past might have bought a moped are now likely to consider buying speed-pedelecs with speeds up to 45 km/h (comparable with the majority of the US e-bikes) which are classified in a similar way to mopeds, requiring a number plate and a helmet on the rider. A combination of these types of bikes and straight electrically powered mopeds without are replacing mopeds with petrol engines. Because they don't have the same noxious emissions, most people see this as an improvement.

The faster "e-bikes" in the USA are not e-bikes here. That's not pejorative and it's not just an opinion. The law in the EU and this country places limits on assisted bicycles and such high powered machines can't be e-bikes. As a result most of the bikes in the US study would need to be registered and have a number place in Europe, the rider would have to wear a helmet and they cannot be ridden everywhere that a normal bicycle (or 25 km/h e-bike) can be ridden.

In the Netherlands, mopeds are used to make about 1% of journeys and their riders suffer from much the same prejudice as do riders of bicycles in countries where cyclists are the 1%. However I have nothing against speed pedelecs, mopeds or motorbikes. To me they're just other alternative means of transport, all of which leap with remarkable ease over the very low bar of being "better than a car", so while I don't choose to ride any of these things myself, I'm not opposed to them. What's more, I live in a city whose main claim to fame is hosting motorcycle races. This would not have been an attractive location to move to if I particularly disliked motorized bicycles of any type.

E-bikes, 3D printers, metal detectors, smart watches ?
The US survey was carried out in 2017. Over 80% of the respondents reporting buying their e-bike in 2015 or later. i.e. most were recent converts to e-biking. Over 95% report being very satisfied or satisfied with what is for many a new purchase.

Any survey which asks people who recently bought any gadget whether or not they like that gadget and whether or not they use it is likely to report that the people who recently bought a gadget do like it and do use it. It really doesn't matter what the gadget is.

You could run the same survey with accessories for normal bikes, parts thought to enhance performance of normal bikes (e.g. lighter wheels), or even totally different products such as 3D printers or smart watches. This does not invalidate any of those devices, which some people make good use of, and it also does not make the e-bike less valid either.

We should recognise that new owners of pretty much any product tend to be enthusiastic about their new purchase. Regardless of what kind of bike they have bought, people will always report using a new bicycle more than their old bicycle.

Because most of the respondents are new purchasers we have to expect that to some extent respondents self-reported opinions will express this aspect of human nature.

What is the effect on modal share ?
Any claim of a huge shift in how people get around based on this survey has to be grounded in the actual mode share figures. The survey was carried out in the USA and Canada. Unfortunately, both of those countries have staggeringly low cycling modal shares, amongst the lowest in the world.

Before modern e-bikes became popular, fewer than 1% of trips were made by bike in the USA and Canada. After e-bikes became popular this remained under 1%.

Despite their very high population densities resulting in short average trip lengths in comparison with Dutch cities, American cities such as Los Angeles and New York have almost unbelievably low rates of cycling. If you're interested in cycling, there is nothing that the rest of the world really can learn from those places except what not to do.

E-bikes are not a magic bullet which can transform a low cycling nation
In the USA, 40% of all trips are under 2 miles in length but 90% of those short trips are made by car. There's a huge potential win there taking only the shortest distance into account.

The USA used to lead the world in cycling. This bicycle,
produced by an American manufacturer in 1904, is the
sort of practical bicycle used by most people before cars
took over the roads. Modern Dutch town bikes are the same.

E-bikes are simply not required to enable the short journeys which make up the majority in any nation to be made by bicycle. No kind of special bike is required over these distances Even the most basic type of everyday bicycle can cover the majority of most peoples' short trips. The distances are so short that they can be covered by almost anyone at all in almost no time at all, riding any bicycle and without breaking a sweat.

But that is not what happens in North America. Why ? There's no safe space for cycling so cycling even over short distances is neither pleasant nor safe, on any bicycle.

If you can't convince the population to use a bicycle to ride a significant proportion of low single digit distances then it's not going to be possible to convince them to do so over longer distance either.

What can we make of the survey overall ?
The US / Canadian survey has little to no relevance to the rest of the world for several reasons:

• The USA is a particularly hostile country in which to cycle and peoples' motivations for using an e-bike included social and planning issues which hopefully do not apply elsewhere.
• The survey was not designed to be representative of either the population as a whole or even of e-bike owners. Survey respondents were largely e-bike enthusiasts who selected themselves.
• Leading questions in the survey resulted in answers which may not accurately reflect the views even of those who took the survey.
• Any survey of people who have just bought any new product will tend to be positive (see 90% of online reviews of anything).
• The definition of an e-bike is so broad that most respondents are using types of motorized vehicles which are legally in a different class in other countries.
• The claims of large shifts are confined to the self-reported actions of the self-selected few who took the survey. They are not represented in the modal share figures of the countries in which the survey was based.

In short: Surveys of this form can mislead the reader into thinking there has been a transformation in cycling which in reality does not exist. I will note again that the authors of the report are quite open about their methodology so I can't criticise them for this. But because of the points above, this report says very little, if anything at all, which can be translated to any other place and certainly nothing which will assist with increasing cycling modal shares in other nations.

So how can we encourage vastly more cycling ?

The logical way to increase cycling is to look to where there has been real success and copy what led to that success. It makes little sense to try to emulate even the boldest claims made in a country where less than 1% of journeys are made by bike when there is a far better example to look at. In cycling, one country leads the rest of the world by a large margin and the Netherlands is that country.

Forty years ago, city scale experiments were performed in Dutch cities to find out what was required to create a genuine and long lasting increase in attractiveness of cycling and therefore a genuine and long lasting increase in cycling.

After a small upwards bump due to the 70s fuel crisis, cycling
continue to grow slowly in the Netherlands due to new cycling
infrastructure being built. In the UK and other countries, a
decline which had begun with the growth of cars merely
paused and then continued again after the oil crisis

The result was really not surprising - the successful experiment consisted of building a comprehensive grid of infrastructure which connected every home to every destination in the city. This enabled everyone to cycle and resulted in an increase in cycling across all demographics. The same thing was copied across the entire country of the Netherlands and while the efforts are not uniform and nor is the result, the entire country now has a high cycling modal share compared with any other country.

All that other countries need to do is copy the successful experiment, choosing from the most successful Dutch schemes. Once people are enabled to cycle, they will be able to choose a bicycle which suits them. Some will opt for assisted bicycles, some will opt for speed pedelecs, some will choose a normal human powered bicycle. That's all good. But no-one should be forced to believe they need to choose what is effectively a motorbike in order to keep up with other motor vehicles.

Update:
A few minutes after publishing this blog post, the video below came to my attention. It shows an older person with a mobility scooter accidentally riding through the door of a bakery in the centre of Assen yesterday. Many older people who can no longer cycle use mobility scooters to get around in this city. They make use of the many cycle-paths which provide direct and safe routes to the city centre from suburban areas. This incident occurred in a nearly car free street at the edge of an area where no cars are allowed. If this person had made the same mistake in a different place with a lot of motor traffic, or in this exact location 40 years ago, then accidentally riding out into the middle of a busy junction could have been catastrophic.

I've added this video because it illustrates part of what I wrote above about vulnerable people. Once we reach an age where controls on something as simple as a mobility scooter become confusing enough that accidents like this can happen, the last thing that is required is more speed so that decisions have to be made more quickly and more frequently. While it is a mobility scooter and not a bicycle in this video, mobility scooters are amongst the many types of vehicle commonly used on Dutch cycle-paths alongside bicycles and there is a relationship between this incident and how pensioners in the Netherlands have more frequent crashes when riding electrically assisted bicycles. A safer built environment cannot prevent mistakes, but it always helps everyone to be safe even if they make a mistake.

A visitor's view of Groningen railway station

Our friend Mike Rubbo came to stay with us in March. It was -10 C here but people were still cycling much as they always do. We had had a chance to get used to the weather, of course, so I thought Mike did well to survive outdoors at all, having come here from the Australian summer.

Mike wrapped up warm to film the
school run in Kloosterveen, a new suburb
of Assen. It's impressive whatever
the weather.

The above is the first of the films that Mike has finished about cycling in this area. This film was shot around the bike shop and cycle parking at the largest railway station in Groningen, with particular emphasis on one of the shop's customers, a lady who uses her electric bike to get around in and around the city and who had an amusing story to tell.

Bikes are everyday transport in this country for the whole population, whatever the weather.

Riding together

Riding through the suburbs

Another of the reasons why it's so good to have a comprehensive network of very high quality cycle paths is that they also are good for people with disabilities to travel by bike.

A few minutes later in the city centre

In this case, two people are riding on an electric assist trike carrying a wheelchair across the back. I saw them first on the way into town, and a few minutes later I saw them again travelling in the opposite direction.

The bike's great, allowing a couple to ride together in this way, side-by-side and sociable. But the people are the important part of this picture. The bike, together with the cycling infrastructure, give this couple freedom that they would otherwise have.

Uninterrupted and unobstructed infrastructure are necessary from their home in the suburbs all the way to the city centre to make it possible for them to use it in this way in comfort, with no problems due to fighting through traffic. It is a legal requirement that all cycling infrastructure has to be accessible to machines like this.

In countries where there isn't such infrastructure, lobbyists for people with disabilities ought to be asking for it. Infrastructure like this is not just for "cyclists". It improves everyone's life.

Mobility man - cycle superhighway

This is one of a series of promotional films about transport produced by the Nijmegen / Arnhem region.

The action largely takes place on the snelbinder cycling bridge in Nijmegen.

The man at the start is asking about a "fietssnelweg" between Nijmegen and Arnhem. The two cities are roughly 18 km / 11 miles apart. The presenter goes on to explain that when distances are greater than around 15 km, this can be offputting to a lot of cyclists, so the conditions need to be made better for cycling, so that the route is more attractive for cycling, and that's the way to get more people to cycle. They also need to encourage bicycles more suitable for longer distances.

This fietssnelweg is still in development. It is expected to be complete in 2012. There is a website for it and currently a competition is being held where people can contribute their ideas for how the route can be made better.

At the end you see a glimpse of what is claimed to be the fastest cycle courier service in the world - a velomobile used daily to take packets between Nijmegen and Arnhem. However, it appears that the local government actually wants to promote electric vehicles.

A tank full of petrol ("gasoline," if you prefer), and what it means

We bought petrol today. It's quite a novelty for us, as we don't do it very often. The last time we bought petrol was way back on August 27th... 2007.

I've mentioned before that we're not really all that enthusiastic about driving, but today we made a short journey in our car and needed to fill up the tank.

It made me think: what exactly have we bought today ? Our tank full of fuel came to a bit more than 36 and a half litres. 36.5 l of petrol weighs about 26 kg. Burning that one tank full of petrol will put about 84 kg, a little more than my own weight, of CO2 into the air. That's the effect from just one tank full of petrol, which according to the manufacturer is supposed to be enough to drive around 500 km.

Petrol is amazing stuff. It has an energy content of 9.7 kWh per litre, so today we bought 355 kWh of energy for our 53 euros. The car consumes about 0.7 kWh produces 0.17 kg of CO2 per km driven.

A few years back, someone who set a world record by cycling over 1000 km in 24 hours calculated that his average power output was about 115 W for the entire 24 hours. That's someone at the absolute peak of what is possible, and his body generated about 2.7 kWh over a 24 hour period.

In light of this, I think it's reasonable to say that an averagely strong person doing an 8 hour shift at a physically demanding job would expend no more than 1 kWh per day at work, so we could say that in our tank full of petrol we've bought the equivalent of someone working hard nearly every day for an entire year, including weekends and almost all holidays. This cost just 53 euros. That really is a bargain.

Car manufacturers put a lot of effort into insinuating otherwise, but cars are actually quite amazingly inefficient. It seems no-one is really all that interested in making them any more efficient. Petrol provides an awesome amount of energy for a remarkably small cost, and pushing gently on the accelerator makes a car zoom along quite nicely. Anyone who's ever pushed a car any distance knows that there is nothing particularly efficient about it.

There is much hype over electric cars, even though they do little more than to shift the source of the output of that CO2 elsewhere. Many power stations are still coal power stations. In fact, many new coal power stations are still being built, all around the world.

When you burn coal at a power station you get only about 2 kWh of energy per kg of coal burnt. If instead of filling up a petrol car today we had charged batteries of an electric car with the same amount of energy by using electricity generated by coal, it would have required the burning of no less than 177 kg of coal, producing a whopping 518 kg of CO2 in the process. That's over 6 times the amount produced by burning petrol directly in a car. An equivalent electric car therefore would still consume about 0.7 kWh but produce over 1 kg of CO2 per km driven. That's being quite generous, as you never get so much energy out of a battery as you put into it when you charge it. With NiMH batteries, for instance, you get back out only about 2/3rds of the energy you put in - under ideal conditions.

Electric bicycles are also not so innocent as many people think. According to this pro electric bike website it costs 1.8 kWh in electricity to charge an electric bike battery for a 20 mile (32 km) range. That's nearly 1 kg of coal per charge. Even with their figures, which like mine for electric cars ignore the problem of inefficiency of rechargeable batteries, this indicates that an electric assisted bicycle, powered by electricity from coal, consumes about 0.05 kWh and produces about 0.08 kg of CO2 per km ridden.

Yes, so electric bikes, if charged by electricity generated by coal (in Australia, for instance, 80% of electricity comes from coal, and the majority of the rest from other fossil fuels), have a CO2 output per km which is only about half that of an average car with one occupant.

Public transport isn't all that much better either. The average bus occupancy in the UK is only about 9 people. Due to this, figures you can calculate for overall efficiency for the entire bus network are actually remarkably similar to those for single occupancy cars.

The same happens with trains. Only if you assume that electric trains take all their electricity from carbon neutral sources do they look particularly good. High speed trains are remarkably close in emissions to jet aircraft.

Here's a comparison of different passenger transport modes in the US. It doesn't much matter than it says BTU instead of kWh that I've been using. 3413 BTU are equivalent to 1 kWh, so divide these figures by 3413 to get equivalent figures to my calculations above:

As you can see, changing from one of these modes to another is really only about making a small change. Anyone who tells you that one mode of powered transport is incredibly more efficient than another is either selling you something, or is misinformed. However, it's big business (much like oil is) and there are plenty of people with a vested interest in trying to convince you that their motorised car replacement can change the world.

Lots of things are described as "green" but few genuinely are. There is a truly "green" alternative to these modes of transport. It's called a bicycle. No fuel is burnt. No CO2 emissions result. You do have to eat, however from what I've seen, people who drive don't eat any less than people who cycle.

All bicycles are wildly more efficient than powered vehicles. They have to be. Inefficiency makes you tired too quickly (compare pushing a bike with pushing a car). However, some bicycles are still more efficient than others and this makes a huge difference if you need to travel more than short distances. A truly "green" car-replacement for longer journeys looks like this !


The sharp eyed might notice we went to a BP station. I know some people are boycotting them, but frankly it's a waste of time doing so. In my opinion there is very little to choose between oil companies. They're all doing their best to make as much profit as possible from extracting oil from wherever they can get it, and they are all responsible for spills. BP was simply unlucky enough to have had their disaster where it was widely seen and reported upon. Boycotting one chain won't do any good. What really needs to happen is for people to appreciate what an amazing resource both oil and coal are, and to consume less of them.

Electric bike demographics

Every so often someone asks me who buys electric bikes in the Netherlands. My usual answer is that they are bought by the elderly (Dutch over 65s make 24% of their journeys by bike) and by people with a disability who need a bit of assistance.

This short article appeared in the September issue of Tweewieler magazine. A magazine for the Dutch bike trade, which is distributed to bike shops.

The title of the article reads "Modern e-bike gets still younger buying public"

There was an online survey of 500 people organised by the Dutch "Halfords" chain of shops (I understand this is no longer connected with British "Halfords"). The survey produced such results as that 37% of correspondents said they wanted an electric bike to make cycling easier.

A representative of Halfords claims that the average buying age is creeping down to around 50, which is much lower than previously, when most were bought by 65+ers, but do bear in mind that he's a salesman.

An older assisted bicycle with a two stroke petrol motor (a snorfiets or low power moped) next to two newer e-bikes. All three are limited to 25 km/h. E-bikes are rapidly replacing the older snorfietsen of this type.

The article also mentions that they often see couples buying his and hers bikes together. This is something I've noticed in the past. Dutch couples who buy identical bikes at retirement so they can cycle together.

The two bikes in the photo on the right are near identical models which were probably bought by a couple. The bike on the left with the number plate is an older style of assisted bike with a petrol engine. These are also limited to 25 km/h, so they were bought by very much the same people as now buy electric bikes. Part of the growth in electric bike sales is due to these types of low power motor bike having been replaced by electric bikes.

Much has been made in some quarters of the number of electric bikes sold in the Netherlands. This article gives a figure of 5000 electric bikes sold in the country last year, with an expectation that this may have doubled to 10000 this year. Impressive growth, but still small numbers compared with the 1.3 million bikes sold per year in the Netherlands.

The reason for the high monetary value of electric bicycles is that when people buy electric bikes in the Netherlands they tend to buy expensive ones. Also, because it's quite common for older couples to buy identical "his and hers" pairs of bikes as in the photo, this in effect doubles the amount spent.

We sell parts for electric bikes in our webshop.