Car, motorcycle companies shift gears, add own e-bikes
The transportation industry has seen the future, and the future is 1895.
That was the year Ogden Bolton Jr., of Canton, Ohio, was awarded U.S. Patent 552,271 for an “electrical bicycle.”
A century and change later, electric bikes have gained new currency as car and motorcycle companies like Ducati, Harley-Davidson, Jeep, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche and Yamaha have horned into the market with their own designs.
While the pandemic has accelerated bike sales, the attraction is that cities worldwide are beginning to restrict motor traffic. These companies are betting that e-bikes are the urban vehicles of tomorrow — or at least vehicles for good publicity today.
“In the past 12 to 18 months, you have seen a lot of new brands come into the market,” said Andrew Engelmann, an e-bike sales and marketing manager at Yamaha, which has been in the electric bike business since 1993 and claims sales of 2 million worldwide.
Credit the pandemic, which has ignited bike sales of all stripes, but none so much as e-bikes.
While retail unit sales of bicycles from January to October last year were up 46% from a year earlier, electric bikes were up140%. Measured in dollars, regular bikes were up 67% and e-bikes 158% — so don’t expect a discount. Those numbers, from the market researchers at NPD, do not include online-only retailers such as Rad Power Bikes, so sales may actually be higher still.
Ogden Bolton aside, there is a historical connection between bicycles and motorcycles. Many early motorcycles came from bicycle makers that simply clapped a motor on a bike, often retaining the pedals in the style of a moped.
The automotive industry’s bicycle connection is more recent, with the likes of Malcolm Bricklin and Lee Iacocca introducing electric bikes in the ’90s. Both flopped.
Iacocca’s design, typical for the time, was hampered by a lead-acid battery with a 15-mile range and a top speed of 15 mph. Many car companies, including Ford, Audi, Maserati and BMW, have gotten into and out of e-bikes since.
“No car company has had any success selling an electric bicycle,” said Don Di-Costanzo, chief executive of Pedego Electric Bikes, who in 2014 licensed a bike design to Ford. “It’s fool’s gold. It can never replace the profit on a car.”
Yet car and motorcycle makers are being drawn in.
“I think they are seeing a lot of the same opportunity wesee,” said Ian Kenny, who leads the e-bike effort at the bicycle company Specialized. “But I think there is a very big difference between demonstrating you can do something and doing something very well at scale.”
E-bikes may be more expensive than bicycles, but are cheaper than cars or motorcycles.
And improved motor and battery technology is bringing prices down. Low-priced e-bikes with a motor in the wheel hub — similar to that 1895 design — can be had for about $1,000. Prices for versions with more complex, geared motors at the pedals can reach more than $10,000.
Price isn’t the only hurdle. E-bikes confront a crippling hodgepodge of laws. Although the Consumer Product Safety Commission deemed“low speed” e-bikes (with a motor equivalent to 1 horsepower or less) a bicycle, states still decide where that bike can be ridden.
The PeopleForBikes coalition drafted model state legislation to allow most e-bikes in bike lanes and parks. It suggests three classes of e-bike, with a top speed 20 to 28 mph. Twenty-eight states have adopted some version of the legislation.