E-bikes should be exploding, just not literally

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Have you ridden an electric bike? If not, you should probably stop reading this article and go find one. Hire one on the street. Borrow your neighbour’s. Steal one if you have to. Sat on the saddle, with the help of the motor, you will magically become half as old and twice as fit. You will feel like Lance Armstrong, in his prime, after an appointment with his doctor. It turns out that it is about the bike.

Electric cars get the hype, but in 2021, e-bikes far outsold them in the US and nearly matched battery vehicles in the UK. They democratise cycling, converting those who don’t want to arrive at their destination sweaty and exhausted. On an e-bike, hills are no problem. You can carry a couple of kids as passengers and transport 150kg of cargo. Under UK law, the motor cuts out above 15.5mph, but you can still make short trips with ease.

E-bikes have reinvented the wheel, in a helpful way. They break the dynamic of cyclists versus other road users, because nearly everyone can now be a cyclist. I’m convinced the main reason more people don’t ride e-bikes is that they don’t know about them. A mile on one can produce fewer carbon emissions than the food required to cycle a mile on a pedal bike.

But it’s not all good news. The London Fire Brigade has been called to an e-bike or e-scooter fire on average every two days this year. Tragically, in January, a 21-year-old woman became the first person to die in an e-bike fire in London.

The rise of rental e-bikes has also annoyed pedestrians, who find them discarded on pavements like giant cigarette butts, obstructing buggies and wheelchairs. A hardware fault means that the omnipresent Lime bikes can be ridden for free, producing a loud clicking sound.

The sector has even been problematic for investors. VanMoof — a Dutch company whose chic e-bikes were popular in the pandemic — went bankrupt this week, despite having proclaimed itself “the most funded e-bike company in the world” when it raised $128mn in 2021.

Like Marmite, Nigel Farage and the Australian cricket team, cycling attracts strong feelings. But before critics become giddy with schadenfreude, let’s take e-bikes’ problems in turn.

The fires do not seem to affect all e-bikes. Transport for London, Lime and HumanForest, which offer these cycles for hire in London, state that none of theirs have caught fire.

The UK’s Bicycle Association says that some reported fires are actually illegal unregistered motorbikes and others are the fault of bad batteries, often shoddily self-installed. “I wouldn’t want to suggest no reputable battery could ever catch fire, but we haven’t yet identified any such cases,” says Peter Eland, the group’s technical and policy director.

These duff batteries are particularly popular with food delivery drivers. The real question is why we allow them to be sold online: where is the UK enforcement agency, Trading Standards? And why are gig economy workers so overworked and underpaid that they install these batteries with little oversight?

As for the nuisance rental e-bikes, riders need to be better citizens. Better infrastructure would help. Lime, which says its number of rides is growing by 10 per cent a month, wants London to build 10,000 e-bike parking bays. For now, let’s remember: a badly parked e-bike still takes up less space than a well-parked car. Plus, Lime says it will fix its hardware glitch by September — no more clacking free-riders.

VanMoof’s problems, meanwhile, seem to have been its own: it sold bikes for €2,000-plus, which was less than they cost to make. It may still rise from the dead, perhaps with a grasp of accounting.

I remain an e-bike believer. The only problem with mine is that so many people want to steal it.

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