People, ebikes, & how not to start a transport revolution
My local bike shop charges £80 for a full service> So £199 which includes 2 services and they come to you dont seem to bad to me...unless it has to be within 12 months
Hi Eddieo,
Justebike's Silver service is only valid for 12 months I'm afraid. So far it has proved popular - but its not there for the likes of you and me!
My aim here is not for early retirement but to start a transport revolution. Last year, working with 8 major UK employers, we studied the commuting habits of 43'000 workers (mixed public and private sector), 9'445 (22%) drive a car to work each day and live within 5 miles of their place of work.
The gross financial benefit of switching this group of commuters from car to ebike-based travel is £25.6 million per annum, or £2,710 per year per electrocyclist. If applied to the 22% of UK workers that commute by car and live within 5 miles of workplace gross annual savings would be £17 billion pa. (assuming our sample of 43'000 is indicative of wider national commuter habits).
There are three beneficiary groups to wide scale adoption of e-bikes, these are:
The State (Government, its agencies, and Local Area Authorities)
The employer
The employee
Savings by beneficiary groups are:
State: 4.9bn
Employers: 4.6bn
Employees: 7.8bn
The environmental benefits are 3.9MtCo2e/pa (more or less what the entire NHS transport related emissions were in 2008).
Depending who you ask between 2.7 and 3.2% of the UK population use a manual bike regularly (160 trips of 3.9km per annum (don't ask!)). There are many reasons for this so I wont bore you with details of our views on it here, but one thing we know with a capital K is that if folk are going to be persuaded to leave their dear motorcars at home and choose e-bikes for those shorter journeys (car are great...for car journeys) they need a fuss-free alternative. Here's my point: Fuss-free costs £199 per annum.
Over time (when i have the time!) I'd like to share more of our research and understanding of this new and exciting market and the dynamics that will likely govern its trajectory. If we all work together (suppliers and knowledgeable users), I'm certain we will see e-bikes become mainstream. I've seen many false horizons over the last 6 years in trying to bring this vision to fruition, a notable low point being my taking Gordon Brown at his word following talks with him last year (part of which was broadcast on R4). Subsequent meetings with DECC at Whitehall and late night phone calls from No.10 led to naught.... they eventually
got it but got fired before anything tangible came of it all. New irons in new fires now so still optimistic.
Wots my biggest fear in all this? Cheap e-bikes....
2017
"Hi John, whats that rusting behind your lawnmower back there?
"Oh that, its one of those electric bikes, do you remember that fad Sue?
"Yeah, wot happened to those? it seemed like such a good idea.... every one had one...
"Dunno, but they all just fell to bits, and you couldn't get parts, and they weren't exactly cool were they, and....
James
