Charging ahead
The rise of the e-bike
With sales estimated to have topped 20,000 last year, e-bikes are going mainstream. The trend promises big savings for people who live within easy reach of their work, and wish to swap their car, or public transport trips, for motor-assisted pedalling.
And the promise is not only for the super-fit and super-muscled, with older women and men among the biggest buyers.
As experienced Auckland e-biker Jolisa Gracewood says: ‘‘Essentially, it is like having Lance Armstrong on the back of a tandem, and asking him to pedal when you need it.’’
Gracewood has been an Auckland e-biker since October 2015, regularly cycling from the pretty harbourside suburb of Point Chevalier to the city centre, a route that includes several long and challenging hills.
‘‘I never arrive sweating, and I always arrive when I expect to,’’ she says. Traffic snarl-ups and queues don’t hinder e-bikers, and nor do headwinds or hills.
‘‘It takes the worst bits out of cycling, and it keeps the best bits,’’ says Chris Hoff-Nielsen, owner of Bikes and Barbers in Newmarket, Auckland.
Such pedalling luxury comes at a price.
‘‘You can pay ten grand for an electric mountain bike, and it will be a beautiful machine. Entry level e-bikes start at $2500-$3000,’’ says Patrick Morgan from the Cycling Action Network.
That makes e-bikes an expensive ’’and’’ purchase. That’s owning a car and an e-bike.
The savings in this scenario come from the days when the owner leaves their car at home, and doesn’t burn petrol.
For those who replace their car with an e-bike, the annual savings can be extensive.
Gracewood’s e-bike allow her and her husband to be a one-car household.
She even uses it for things like shopping, because with panniers on the back, reasonably heavy loads can be managed without discomforting the rider.
Instead of having to pay for WOF, mechanics bills, insurance, registration, and petrol on two cars. There’s only one cash and gas-guzzler on the driveway.
Savings made by swapping one car for an e-bike will vary from person to person, but Morgan thinks many families are paying around $10,000 a year, including insurance, rego, maintenance, petrol and depreciation, to own their second car.
There are running costs with e-bikes, including depreciation. Like any commuter bike, an e-bike need servicing, tyres need replacing from time to time, and so does the battery.
Then there’s charging the bikes up off ordinary wall plugs at home (the batteries unclip for plugging in).
Mercury Energy, which has thrown its marketing muscle into publicising the benefits of e-bikes, reckons it costs around 10 cents of charge for every 100kms of e-biking.
Hoff-Nielsen says batteries can be expected to take you 50,000 kms before they need replacing, for a current cost of around $600. By the time that is needed, technology will have moved on, he says, and many cyclists will upgrade to the next model.
Worldwide, e-bikes are outselling electric cars at a ration of 300 to one, Mercury says. Here, it’s harder to be sure of the numbers.
Morgan estimates 20,000 e-bikes were sold in New Zealand last year, but Hoff-Nielsen says nobody collects sales figures, though sales are rising fast.
‘‘It’s going from strength to strength, but I think we are just at the beginning of the wave,’’ he says.
Hoff-Nielsen recently took delivery of a 40 foot container of e-bikes. All 154 sold in just five days.
Morgan says the development of bike lanes and trails throughout towns and cities, especially Auckland, is a factor in people making more trips on two wheels.
Auckland Transport latest cycling monitor shows its 13 city centre ‘‘count’’ sites recorded 162,055 cycle trips in January, an increase of 1.3 per cent compared to January last year.
Morgan says just focusing on the economics of e-bikes would be wrong.
A whole generation of people are returning to two wheels to enjoy the buzz of cycling after decades of motoring everywhere.
‘‘We talk about the e-bike grin,’’ he says. ‘‘Riding a bike again can feel like magic, just like when you were a kid.’’
Big mountain bike brands like Avanti, Giant and Specialized all making high-performance e-bikes.