It’s Time For Everyone to Stop Ignoring E-Bikes
From TreehHugger.com
By Lloyd Alter
Politicians and planners are missing the e-bike revolution with their preoccupation with e-cars. Even the climate activists at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 26) did it. Now BloombergNEF’s Electric Vehicle Outlook for 2022 has been released and—surprise!—it ignores e-bikes.
It’s big on 2- and 3-wheelers (the mopeds, scooters, and tuk-tuks you find in Asia) and notes the staggering difference between the size of the e-car fleet compared to 2- and 3-wheeled electric vehicles (EVs).
“The acceleration in EV adoption means that combustion vehicle sales peaked globally in 2017 and are now in permanent decline. By 2025 passenger ICE sales are 19% below their 2017 peak. Managing the decline while investing in the future is a major challenge for some legacy automakers.”1
But e-cars are still only 9% of sales and the e-car fleet is under 17 million worldwide, while the 2- and 3-wheelers are at 275 million, showing them at completely different scales on their illustrations.
This description of “2- and 3-wheelers” seemed odd. Surely if you are looking at the state of electric vehicles, e-bikes should be mentioned, not excluded as the note at the bottom of the EV fleet sizes suggests. In the U.S. alone, e-bike sales were up 240% last year with 790,000 imported, compared to 652,000 electric cars, including plug-in hybrids. In Europe, e-bikes are projected to outsell cars by the middle of this decade, whether gas or electric powered. Deloitte recently predictedthere could be 300 million e-bikes by 2023.
