2024 has turned out to be a continuation of 2023:
1. post-Covid stockpiles have remained stubbornly high;
2. industry instability has resulted in many more brands being acquired or falling into outright bankruptcy.
And the industry enters 2025 in a position only a little better than one year ago—everyone was expecting the stockpiles to be at least almost with business back to normal. It seems we have one more year to go.
Is there another year of tough decisions ahead in 2025 for brands and manufacturers? It seems likely. Yet some 965 companies—15 more than 2024—will attend Taipei Cycle in March 2025.
Having hit the bicycle industry particularly hard, legacy of Covid 19 continues. Yet, despite it all, the industry is overall bullish nonetheless, with a record number of companies set to attend the March 2025 edition of the Taipei Cycle Show.
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Tough Times
At this midpoint of the decade, the defining feature is the (continuing) shake out of the industry, particularly e-bike brands. The reasons are varied although at the base of it is the post-Covid environment in which a boom in e-bikes usage turned into an across-the-board correction.
A surprising bit of news was Yamaha’s withdrawal from the US market. A long-established pioneer of e-bikes, it seems Yamaha was too expensive in an environment that has quickly become arguably oversupplied with cheaper competing alternatives. Lowering price points is the go-to quick fix although the better route is to leverage the brand and add more value.
Even raising prices is sustainable by increasing product value as long as it accords exactly with what your market defines as value. The more nuanced and intimate your knowledge of your market, the greater your ability to nail what it is they want. As long as costs are covered—another discussion entirely—you’re in with a chance.
And then Stromer followed suit. A premium brand with prices at $10k+ you would assume to be at odds in a market where demand for that level of product has become as thin as the margins making it (marginally) viable in the first place.
Perhaps a key lesson for those eyeing the US market is to go overboard on your value proposition—latest tech, rock solid ongoing support, resilient components—and all at an irresistible price point. The tension between these elements—both of which face in opposite directions—is by no means easily negotiated of course. Companies that can makes it work, though, will do pretty well.
Innovations
Despite the travail involved with coming up with a business strategy that works, new models are still being introduced into the market marked by some extremely innovative (although not always high tech) contributions to e-bike evolution.
Making the Old, New
Gnargo Bike Co. is transforming old MTBs into new cargo e-bikes—does this set a benchmark for innovation in e-bike manufacturing?
Here’s the Schoolie as an example. Not attractive. But practical.
The classic cargo is appealing with a lower center of gravity and more storage space. The long wheelbase and 20-inch front wheel of the Classic Cargo delivers a lower center of gravity making it easy to move up to 160kg (they claim).
Each model starts off with a 1990s or 90s steel MTB or road bike frame. The rear triangle is modified for disk brakes; gussets are added in the right places for added support. The head tube and down tube are cut—the head tube is set at 68 degree angle which suits carrying heavy loads on the front.
The inspiration came out of the pandemic. The husband and wife designer/manufacturers couldn’t find a front-loader e-cargo at the right price. With a background in bike advocacy giving them a keen interest in the development of cargo bikes, particularly the uptake in the USA, they came up with their own.
Cue the Revolution
“The biggest revolution in mountain bikes has been the e-bike and we’re only getting started,” writes Lance at Offroad.cc. While the electrification of MTBs has revolutionized the niche, there is still much that can be improved.
He’s looking toward lighter batteries for one, since a lighter MTB overall reduces wear on components. Also on the wish list is eliminating the need for rapid recharging. Commuters require faster recharging than recreational cyclists, he argues. Powerful batteries that don’t need rapid recharge capabilities cut down on cost and weight.
Universal standards would be nice too in which “battery pack form factor, fasteners, and contact point specification” are standardized, making upgrades and maintenance a lot easier than it is now.
And finally, data passports that work with data collection and transmission or storage sensors that provide a bike’s complete history. This is probably bigger than even the author is imagining here since these issues are being made central to new European Union rules that manufacturers will have to conform to over the next few years.
You might think that evolving blockchain-based technologies may be the solution here, although decentralized approaches to data collation and storage not least who can store and access what data, have yet to find mainstream support in traditional bureaucracies.
Let’s see if the upcoming Taipei Cycle show in March displays any evidence that manufacturers are tuned into any of these themes.
Paving the Way Offroad—Without Going eMTB
Despite the regular weekly announcement of the demise of another e-bike brand, some are doing very well indeed.
Haibike has launched a newly designed range and anticipate an “exiting year ahead” in the words of Raleigh UK MD Chris Slater. At the core is the Bosch Performance Line CX motor.
The new AllMtn, AllTrail, and ADVENTR models cover a broad spectrum of the market—the theme here is getting off-road without having to go full send into MTB mode.
AllTrail 10.5 cuts the top tube from the AllTrail 6 giving in a step through frame—more convenient; but you’d have to say the latter projects a meaner look. Check out the report from E-Mountainbike for a concise overview.
Haibike are about as bullish as you can get given that the industry is still in the doldrums or only beginning to improve, depending on who you talk to. Being a part of a concern the size of Accell does not hurt, of course. It provides an degree of insurance, even in the face of recent financial instability within Accell.
Heybike’s new Hero model cuts a figure not unlike Haibike, although it uses carbon and not aluminum like Haibike.
Key questions here are:
Is carbon a great choice for an all-terrain model?
Are the weight savings and vibration damping necessary to optimize the off-road adventures and exploration experience?
There’s a weight saving of some 4-6 kg compared to an alloy frame of the same size. The company talks up the minimization of wind resistance and vibration absorption. Could either factor be central to the experience the ideal target customer of this unit is looking to enjoy?
A key factor is in the result of a significant collision with, well anything, the integrity of the carbon frame comes into question in a case of guilty until proven innocent of cracks.
All up, targeting the All Terrain, Adventure segment, or whatever you might like to call it, is a good move—a broad niche with a lot of room to grow.
Urban Mobility
Car + Gone = Cargone, a brand name which communicates in no uncertain terms which way the world should be heading. Cargone’s Solution Long Tail DUO is based around a low center of gravity and the key innovation of a rear-loading cargo bay.
Utility vehicles such as Australia’s “utes” and “trucks” elsewhere in the world are based around the principle that it’s easier to slide objects into, rather than up and over, a containing module.
Cargone call their system the Albatross and features a space that can be expanded or contracted depending on cargo requirements—from 20, to 24 and out to an industry-first maximum of 33 inches.
The addition of an automatic dropper post enables quick shifting between riders in multi use situations. A patent pending seat presets system combined with the 200mm dropper post lets you preset the seat height for the range of people who regularly use the bike.
Minimalist and Extremely Flexible
MAHLE claims to have moved the smart bike systems needle a little further with the XS system, which achieves marked simplification by making a large internal battery obsolete, opting instead for an external, compact unit. The ebike has been “distilled … down to its most essential elements,” said GM Jochen Sommer
Battery integration has long posed a challenge for bike manufacturers due to size and assembly complexities. MAHLE’s XS system solves this by offering a streamlined eBike setup powered entirely by a 1kg external battery, which conveniently fits in a standard water bottle cage. In addition, the newly developed Smart Motor Controller can be mounted inside or outside the frame, allowing for minimalistic, unobtrusive integration—making it possible to use standard muscular bike frames to create fully functional eBikes.
Aiming to reduce the system’s environmental footprint, the XS system is made up of only the necessary components—the eX1 External Battery, XS Smart Controller, X20 or X30 Hub Drive Unit, and a Torque or PAS (Pedal Assist) Sensor. Ease of maintenance and a broad range of accessories provide an equally wide range of customization options.
Sustainable Plastics
A trend gathering momentum among European manufacturers is the rejection of steel and aluminum alloy and a move to injection-molded plastics, often produced within local supply chains.
A notable chapter in this story was the appearance of the Igus prototypes in 2022. Not particularly attractive and non-electrical, post-Igus the stage is perhaps set for a flurry of plastic (non epoxy-carbon too of course) designs to come into the market.
Materials supplier Syensqo has partnered with Monaco-based Stajvelo to come up with a nicely styled urban commuter. They’ve employed a new high-performance Xencor Para LGF polymer which is both stiff and impact resistant, resistance to corrosion stress cracking with no fissure propagation—this alone probably puts it ahead of carbon fiber (also a form of reinforced epoxy plastic).
The e-bike frame is formed using specialty polymer injection molding processes that, it is claimed, reduces global warming potential by about 70% compared with aluminum alloy manufacturing.
Popularity of E-bikes
Let’s end the year on a positive note. MBR magazine observes that E-bikes are more popular than ever, and 5% cheaper than they were in 2022. Well, in the UK anyway, although anecdotal evidence in your local area will testify to the truth of increasing e-bike penetration.
10 years ago, pedal assist were 86 per 10,000 bikes sold; now the figure is 967 per 10,000. It feels like it should be more. But you have to say that we’re probably still only just getting started. There are many non-cyclists yet to get into e-bikes, as well as non-ebike riders who are yet to make the transition.
2023’s price drop of some 5% indicates movement in the right direction—and this is in the face of the worst inflation in decades, substantially altering the buying behavior of most consumers. A qualification to this is that price discounting was largely an effort to reduce high inventory levels. The real test will come when the market is back to a normal level of demand and expected continued inflationary measures.
Elsewhere in Europe, of course, the numbers are more like what you’d expect. Germany had 10x the sales of the UK. The French purchased 781,000 ebikes, the Netherlands 448,000 which is proportionally more given the population differences.
The bottom line is the underestimated distorting effect of the Covid-19 pandemic. 2025 will be better. Nevertheless, by the time we enter the 2030s, we’ll look back on the 2020s as a decade in which the pandemic was the independent variable that affected everything, and everyone in ways that we’ll still be reflecting on even at the end of that decade.
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