Have you ever wondered, while cycling in your city, why cyclists were moving faster and faster: “Why am I so slow? Are they professional cyclists?” ?
Probably not, they are surely equipped with e-bikes.
The first ever electric bicycle was patented in the USA in the 1890s. Following the evolution of technologies, the e-bikes’ sales grew by 35% from 1993 till 2004 and finally arrived at 34,75 million unit sales volume worldwide by 2017. The experts predict the e-bikes market to expand further up to 40 million units by 2023.
Genova, Italy was the first bike sharing system to get e-bikes, in 2009. June 2014 saw Madrid as the first world capital to launch an all-electric bike-sharing program. In the USA Birmingham, Alabama granted a contract for solar-powered stations in October 2015. A month later, China’s Shanxi province inaugurated the largest electric fleet in the world with 3,000 pedelecs at 225 stations. The e-bikes started conquering the world!
New waves of innovation came quickly afterwards. In 2018, electric bicycles, both docked and dockless, began to infiltrate bike-sharing in capitals and other big cities. Now more than 18 million public-use bicycles are offered in over 1,600 programs! Around 130 of these programs offer e-bikes as part of their fleet. This amounts to around 40,000 shared pedelecs (e-bikes) worldwide, with half of them in China. So electric bikes expanded vigorously worldwide.
The creatively destructive phenomenon
According to scheme operators, introduced e-bikes into bike-sharing, there was a 2,5 to 3 times increase in usage. It appears that users choose e-bikes not only out of simple curiosity. Electric bikes offer significant benefits compared to mechanical ones. These benefits transform the user behaviour.
First of all, among new riders there are more and more of those who were lazy to pedal before, those ageing or with health or fitness difficulties.
Additionally the number of female users grows: according to the British statistics in 2017 the number of e-bike share male and female users was almost even as never before. The possible reasons for this growth are based on the idea of bicycling itself. Traditionally in the beginning in many countries there were more male cyclists than female ones. Though with e-bikes bicycling became more comfort-friendly: less sweat and exercise, no need to change the clothes after each ride, keeping fresh look etc.
Thirdly, the comfortable distance to cover enlarges, even hilly cities stop being a problem.
Moreover, in some regions sharing e-bikes is relatively cheap that improves accessibility for those not employed or with unstable income.
Affordable, flexible, 24/7 hours available, e-bikes become a serious rival for personal cars. The same British survey showed that sharing e-bicycles made people feel happier by 58% and healthier by 41%.
A truly revolutionary innovation, pedal assist bikes present a promising step into a new era of urban transportation. Is it the key answer to how to change the urban mobility?
E-bikes popularity impact
According to the statistics from one of the bike-sharing systems, e-bikes usually win over traditional bikes immediately after their introduction.
As for expenses endured by those operators to install e-bikes, they are not that impressively higher than for classic bike share station launch, only $200-$400 per bike. A little more attention towards the station location since access to energy is a must, but the huge popularity and hence growing number of subscribers outweigh those factors.
However, we do not wear rose-colored glasses: the popularity of electric bicycles has a significant downside too. Users, being so eager to benefit from freedom of choice and convenience of transportation, forget about safety and comfort of others. The average speed of the e-bicycle is higher than the traditional one. For example, there are only two countries in the world where it is obligatory to wear helmets when biking (shared or personal vehicle), Australia and New Zealand. But is it the only solution?
Obviously, local councils have to introduce safe bicycle infrastructure and clear e-bike legislation, translating regulations on general usage, speed limit, licencing, etc.
What is the key factor to succeed in improving existing bike-sharing services? Data sharing. Cities have to provide real-time access to data from operators to use it for better planning and operations. If you are interested in learning how deploying data analysis allows to predict user behaviour and build forecasts on user demand, read here: https://qucit.com/bikepredict_en/
All in all e-bikes present an important change in worldwide bike sharing, bringing more customers in, but at the same time imposing extra risks. Remarkably, we at Qucit and other members of shared mobility community are not only witnessing those changes and repercussions, we are helping influence them. Are you with us?
And remember, e-bike is cheating — but only if you’re riding the Tour de France!
Sources:
1) https://como.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Shared-Electric-Bike-Programme-Final-Report.pdf
3) http://www.makery.info/en/2018/04/17/velos-partages-le-grand-bond-en-avant-de-lelectrique/
To learn more about Qucit : www.qucit.com
