ZIV background: bicycle and e-bike sales to remain stable in the long run

18 December 2024

An incredible boom? Unprecedented sales? A rapid slump? Crises like we’ve never seen before? The headlines about the bicycle market are always full of superlatives and have recently tended to focus on the allegedly particularly negative market developments.

A realistic, long-term review of the actual figures for the bicycle industry and market tell a different story, though – both in terms of the units produced and the revenue.

The bicycle and e-bike market could be described as volatile, as a whole variety of factors can influence the number of units sold every year: a cold spring delays purchases until early summer. There are significantly fewer sales in rainy years, but all the more when the weather is fair. Major cycling events can boost sales and so too can a major pandemic like Covid-19, of course.

Thanks to the variety of products for an everyday means of transport, sports equipment, lifestyle gadgets, work equipment, and customers’ many other needs, the bicycle and e-bike market is at the same time also extremely stable. A close look at the number of units sold over several years and longer periods of time clearly confirms the long-term stability of the market.

An average of 4.48 million bicycles and e-bikes were sold every year between 1994 and 2023.In the past five years, from 2019 to 2023, 4.52 million were sold – almost exactly the annual average for the past 30 years. Comparable figures of between 4 and 4.9 million units can be seen for all five or ten-year periods in the past 30 years. The market is even more stable when the population size and number of units sold are considered: 0.05 bicycles/e-bikes per person – both in the 30-year average from 1994 to 2023, during all five-year periods within these 30 years and in the past ten years (2014 to 2023).

But what about the mobility transition? The mountain bike boom? Bike leasing, which has supposedly transformed the entire market? The current sales crisis? Or certain politicians’ criticisms of cargo bikes? When it comes to the number of units sold, none of these factors appear to have affected the market – they have neither caused bubbles nor jeopardised the market. While this may disappoint enthusiasts, in the current situation, this is far more a confirmation that the German market will remain stable in the coming years.

But what about the revenue per unit? Unlike the number of units sold, it has not remained stable over the past decade. Rather, it has known only one direction, namely up. More and more e-bikes offering better and safer features are among the units sold. The average price per unit has increased by a factor of 3.4 in the past ten years, from €528 in 2014 to €1,788 in 2023. Hence while the market has remained stable in terms of the number of units sold, the revenue generated has risen from €2 billion to over €7 billion.

Given the high proportion of e-bikes, growing popularity of bike leasing schemes, high-quality mountain bikes and, yes, even cargo bikes, there is no reason to expect the bicycle and e-bike market as a whole to decline in the coming years or for the high price per unit not to be sustained and continue its upward trend.

In light of ongoing developments, this paper is a living document that will be adapted/updated as necessary.

Document created | 18.12.2024