ELECTRIC BIKES
E-whizz!
Electric bikes are the perfect way to get us out of our cars – and keep us fitter, too. Here’s everything you need to know to join our European neighbours in the two-wheeled green revolution. This is cycling… but not as you knew it!
by TESSA HILTON
GETTY
My cycling skills are rusty and my joints likewise, so can a bike with a battery help me recapture the pleasure of pedal power? I’m about to discover. A government-backed pilot scheme, Making Cycling E-asier, is offering a month’s free e-bike loan as part of a push to encourage active travel for everyday journeys.
It’s not before time. E-bikes could be a game-changer in the battle to cut carbon emissions by persuading us to leave our cars at home for short trips – way less huff and puff than a ‘normal’ bike but you still get to avoid congestion and parking woes, and feel virtuous at the same time. Yet Britain is falling way behind in this particular cycling race.
Europe has quite literally overtaken us. Sales of e-bikes in the UK shrank by 5% from 165,000 in 2021 to 155,000 in 2022. Meanwhile, in Germany two million were sold in 2022, with carmakers Audi and Porsche even offering their own luxury models.
And 750,000 e-bikes were sold in France in 2022; a friend on a recent holiday reported constantly being left for dust by eightysomethings whizzing past on batter y-powered wheels along the French cycle paths, with practically everyone except British tourists using e-bikes. Why are we so behind? It’s at least partly a lack of government incentives and support, say experts. After all, these are expensive products. ‘Incentives to boost e-bike uptake would represent excellent value for taxpayers in terms of offering a real low-cost alternative transport,’ points out Peter Eland at the Bicycle Association. ‘The cost would be very modest in comparison with the sums spent encouraging the take-up of electric cars, for example.’