E-bike sales in Europe see further cooling down

Will the e-bike market in Europe ever reach a market share of 70% or even 80%, as predicted by industry insiders during the boom years of 2017-2019? An overview of e-bike market share by sales volume in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Switzerland clearly shows a slowdown in sales, and even a contraction in some markets.

The transformation to clean mobility has not yet lost momentum, but growth is slowing for e-bikes and bicycles. This is clearly reflected in the sales figures published by national industry associations. In all of the aforementioned countries, market volume either declined or remained flat. How will the industry revive this market slowdown after being so swamped with excess inventory and challenging financial positions?

Last year, the 2023 statistics already showed that, after more than a decade of unbridled expansion in e-bike sales, market stabilisation had arrived. At that time, the reported contraction of the European market was 8%. Adding the 2024 results, we now see that the European market has lost a total of 12 percentage points in two years.

Discounting results in market value decline

The total number of e-bikes distributed in these countries last year was 4,067,517, down from 4,280,199 units in 2023 – a decrease of 4.97%. Some countries reported an extreme drop in the e-bike market. The rising star of the decade, France, lost more than 15% of its sales volume, and its market share slid to below one-third again. Spain lost almost one-fifth of its e-bike market. Europe’s largest e-bike market, Germany, saw no change in the number of e-bikes distributed. The only exception was Austria, which saw a slight increase in volume of 2.53%, or 5,574 units. The Europe-wide decline in volume of almost 5% is remarkable considering the large-scale discounting and marketing efforts by all brands and distributors combined.

The impact of the discounting campaign is reflected in the development of average retail prices. In all markets combined – except the United Kingdom and Switzerland – the average price paid for an e-bike fell by 3.2%, from €2,770 in 2023 to €2,681 last year. The combination of a slowdown in sales volume and a decline in average price had a big impact on the market value. Within one year, the market lost 7.8% of its value, dropping to €10.1 billion.

Long-term perspective for the e-bike

The e-bike market in 2019 is often considered the benchmark, as it was the final year before the Covid-19 disruption. In that year, a total of 2,979,566 e-bikes were sold across Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Switzerland. This means that the e-bike market expanded by 6.4% in volume over the past five years. If this growth trend continues over the next 10 years, the e-bike market in these eight countries could expand to more than 7.5 million units.