Is the ebike market moving upwards?

[RobF]

There's no doubt there are more ebikes about than a few years ago.

But from my inevitably limited observations, the proportion of quality crank drive bikes on the road has increased even more.

During a recent trip to the Lake District I saw six or seven ebikes, all but one was a crank drive from one of the well-known makes - Cube, Trek, Specialized and the like.

I called into the glass palace Bike Treks bike shop which is on the main road into Windermere.

They had about a dozen ebikes on show, nearly all of which were Bosch, Shimano, or Brose crank drives.

The budget range - two bikes - was Wisper, so well done to David Miall for getting his bikes in there.

So I reckon the growth area within the still relatively tiny ebike market is in £2K+ crank drive bikes.

Local conditions may play a part, the Lake District is a generally prosperous area so one might expect dearer bikes.

But even in my relatively poor area in the North East I am seeing some crank drive bikes, compared to a few years ago when the only crank drive bike I saw was the one I was riding.

What sort of ebikes do you see being ridden in your area?

 

[LeighPing]

What sort of ebikes do you see being ridden in your area?

GTech's, internet and supermarket ebikes mostly. I saw this one an hour ago.

 

[Woosh]

What sort of ebikes do you see being ridden in your area?

In Southend, if you look around at the bike parking places, the black and the silver Wooshes are still the most often seen, then the blue gray wooshes, followed by the Thompsons and Cyclamatics.
No sight of any posh bikes.
I see sometimes Wispers going up Queens Road. They could well be testers from BikeBase in my neighbourhood.

 

[KirstinS]

Brighton and Shoreham By sea has a right old blend of top end haibikes, ktm etc.

Brightonebikes making its mark as i. see plenty bafang BBSXX conversions too

I even chatted to a guy with a trusty 7 year old tonaro the other day

 

[RobF]

In Southend, if you look around at the bike parking places, the black and the silver Wooshes are still the most often seen.

Pleased to hear it, shows you know what your are doing.

A good retailer can have an impact locally.

There are lots of Gazelle bikes around York, all from Cycle Heaven, even though there are several other good bike shops in the city.

 

[EddiePJ]

In my area, and excluding my bikes, I regularly see.

3 KTM's.
2 Specialized.
3 Kalkhoff.
1 Wisper.
2 Haibikes.
1 Scott.
1 elderly Trek Valencia.
1 Stealth Hurricane.

 

[Nealh]

About 1/2hr ago I saw a peloton of 10 ebikes going pass my house. A mixture of top bar and step thru all with crank drive of the bosch like, a group probably semi or retired peeps out on a leisure ride as nearly all had panniers. This the first proper sign I have seen where I live of ebikes on the up.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

I never see crank-drive bikes around Telford, even though it's quite hilly. There's a fair mix of the typical Chinese ones, and I'm seeing more and more Halfords Carrera Es. The local electric bike shop has sold a few Scotts with CDs but I think these guys take them off-road somewhere.

 

[cyclebuddy]

I've seen a couple of 1000-watt conversion hub-drives on my local roads (naughty), and a Kalkhoff Integrale Speed Pedelec on a NCN cycle route... we stopped for a brief chat. He was very chuffed at his new £3500+ acquisition, boasting of it's 28mph top speed, and totally oblivious to the fact it was illegal to ride it on either the public road or the sustrans NCN path as he was happily doing. I'd be surprised if 50-cycles from who he'd purchased it hadn't advised him! But I've yet to see a legal pedelec.

Later passing 4 x 14-year-old yobs again illegally riding (obviously stolen) Mopeds on this same NCN path, I wondered when, given the recent proliferation of these expensive e-bikes, the yobs would start mugging people for their high-value e-bikes (as has previously been reported with regular bikes on the Bristol to Bath NCN cycleway)?

 

[anotherkiwi]

Tourist season has brought a load of higher end bikes this year - Stromer, Kalkhoff, Lapierre, Moustache... But being a seaside resort well off retired people here often ride higher end bikes - Haibike, KTM, the local Giant dealer can't keep those in stock apparently. My boss bought a cheaper rear hub direct drive Giant at the beginning of the year. BH and orbea are well represented seeing how close we are to the border (no wall...).

Then there are the supermarket specials, quite a few ridden by the working class. I am riding the only home built that I have seen on the road. The lady that inspired me to look into e-bikes has changed her Matra folder for a new one. Some fat bikes including cheaper Chinese ones.

 

[Danidl]

Tourist season has brought a load of higher end bikes this year - Stromer, Kalkhoff, Lapierre, Moustache... But being a seaside resort well off retired people here often ride higher end bikes - Haibike, KTM, the local Giant dealer can't keep those in stock apparently. My boss bought a cheaper rear hub direct drive Giant at the beginning of the year. BH and orbea are well represented seeing how close we are to the border (no wall...).

Then there are the supermarket specials, quite a few ridden by the working class. I am riding the only home built that I have seen on the road. The lady that inspired me to look into e-bikes has changed her Matra folder for a new one. Some fat bikes including cheaper Chinese ones.

If you look at any of the European magazines, .. I have an app that allows one to read them,( Readly. ,) The majority of bikes reviewed and advertised, are Bosch , or brose or equivalent, and typical prices around 3k euro. So it looks from here that the UK is the home of the lower cost ebikes. In France even small supermarkets, branches of the major chains, will have a hub motored ebike at say 600 euro . There is currently a scheme available for those with French addresses , and bank accounts, to get up to 200 euro off this.

 

[kangooroo]

There seem to be very few e-bikes here at all (Wye Valley/Herefordshire/Monmouthshire). Out of the 4 seen this month, all had rear hub motors and a couple I met in the Forest of Dean on the Family Cycling Trail were using Halfords Coyote Connect folding bikes with front-wheel hub motors. I haven't seen a crank drive yet. Both of mine also have rear hub motors.

 

[STEVEMANFA]

I'm in the Forest of Dean and I see more and more ebikes, and I think there is some nice looking bikes about now.

 

[Tugwell Gibson]

I've been looking out for ebikes since getting one on January. I'm in Bexley south London. I've seen maybe 4 all hub drive shopper style. I guess if you hang around a mountain bike area then you will see a lot more crank drives. I'm not so sure these crank drive hAibike style bikes are such a vast improvement . I'm a member of emtb smile on Facebook. And they seem to constantly be having problems with their bikes.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

I'm not so sure these crank drive hAibike style bikes are such a vast improvement . I'm a member of emtb smile on Facebook. And they seem to constantly be having problems with their bikes.

If somebody buys a catalogue bike for £600 and it goes wrong, they come on here asking how to fix it. If somebody pays £3500 for a Haibike and it goes wrong, they take it back to the dealer, who fixes it, and we never hear about it.

Also, you have the effect, where people paid a lot for their bike to get better reliability. When it goes wrong, most would prefer to keep quiet about it because it sort of shows that their decision didn't pay-off, and people don't like to admit when they lose. In the past, I had access to some forum members' bikes dealer-maintenance history. They were always bleating on here about how great their bikes were and telling everybody to get one, but they conveniently forgot to mention about the problems they had.

I'm always popping in to my local e-bike shop to see how things are going. They've sold a lot of bikes of all types for nearly a year now. You can count the number of problems on one hand. On high-end bikes, dropper seat-posts seem to give trouble. Apart from that, there's been one faulty controller and one motor wire not fully inserted and one. That's on normal e-bikes. They also sell various weird and special e-bikes that have had some very minor problems that were easily fixed.