Pedalcycling into war - might (e)Bikes be back?

[Firn]

A year on and with a considerable amount of miles helped in part by an electric engine I it is time to look at the bigger economic picture.

1) In the EU, the key driver of high-end market, e-bikes are now outselling petrol bikes!

With regard to e-bikes the Federation states that sales in this category grew with 25.6% to 1,139,000 units. This total is a low estimate. In its June/July edition, which contained a 2014 Market Report for EU e-bike imports and sales, this trade journal concluded that the 2014 volume of the e-bike, e-MTB and speed e-bike market in Europe stood at 1,325,000 units.

v.s

According to the latest data available, in 2014 a total of 1,099,000 PTWs were registered in the EU and 57,550 PTWs were registered in EFTA countries. The year 2014 was the first year since 2007 in which the number of PTW registrations remained stable on a year-on-year basis.

In short after an amazing growth in the last couple of years the demand is strong.

2) The demand increases in years past has greatly driven industrial investment into the high-end electric bike market from the smallish Mittelstand to big players like Panasonic, Yamaha, Bosch, Shimano, Continental with engines and batteries or just the latter like Samsung.

This competition will continue to drive innovation, especially in conjunction with rather wild development race in (mountain) biking. Prices per performance will come down.

3) This investment and interest has led to an ever growing amount of electric bikes of all sorts for almost every niche. In the new ones the prices are of course still very high but there will be cheaper alternatives in the next years.

From DH bikes,



to full-suspension fatbikes



to all-wheel ones you have the broadest choice yet for your low-level transport vehicle.

4) For military applications it is of course important to keep Dahuyan's point in mind:

It's also true that while a skilled rider on a mt bike can move fast over quite difficult terrain, this requires skill and a great deal of practice. If less skilled people try to do it, especially under large loads, accidents and injuries will result. Adding mt biking to a training rotation would probably be fun, but I'm not sure how practical it would be!

In general I would now put less weight on rather difficult terrain and trails and more one the general ability to get rather quickly and silently on a short trip from A to B in which most military vehicles have a harder time to traverse or are not needed. I think in some cases those electric bikes would fit Sven's neat idea of parasitic vehicles. Serious trail training should not be worth it's opportunity costs in practically every case.

As before I would pick at least a high-end speed pedelec if not a 'race' spec one, with wide tyres and top-end suspensions or a light e-motorcycle like the KTM Freeride E. Such decisions need obviously proper reviews and testing and not just speculations.