(Photo credit: TOBIAS SCHWARZ / AFP)
After a slight upturn in 2017, the use of electrically assisted bicycles has continued to grow since then. Tired of taking their car, or public transport, the French are turning more and more to this ecological travel solution , both to get to work and for leisure use.
Skyrocketing sales figures since 2018
Purchasing aid to promote ecological travel
The VAE on the way to overtaking the mechanical bicycle
The electric bicycle market in France now represents 45% of total bicycle sales in the territory. At the start of 2020, bicycle shops saw their order book explode. The transport strikes during the winter of 2020 in the Paris region prompted many people to take the plunge in buying an electric bike.
If during the year 2019, cycle dealers sold 388,000 electric bicycles , the figures for this year promise to be much higher.
For fear of taking public transport due to Covid-19, a lot of French people wanted to switch to VAE, even before deconfinement.
There is an increase in electric bike sales of more than 117% post-lockdown .
Liberating, this deconfinement has allowed the French to completely review their mode of travel, especially when the weather is good like this season.
Transformation of cities to accommodate more bicycles
Today, no one wants to end up in a crowded subway, at the risk of being exposed to the virus . To avoid a rebound in car traffic, large cities must rethink traffic to avoid seeing the progress of recent years in terms of CO2 emissions reduced to nothing.
Fast, comfortable and practical, bicycles are the ideal solution to deal with this situation. Thus, to adapt to receiving this excess bicycle traffic, many cities have built more than 1000 km of temporary cycle paths , called "coronapists" by some, to make urban traffic more fluid during the Covid-19 epidemic. .
France is a good student in the matter, having seen its circulation of bicycles progress the most during the week, between August 2019 and August 2020. The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, who defended the cause of the bicycle long before the pandemic, said the idea of a return to a car-dominated city was out of the question.
Conclusion of the study on the increase in electric bicycles in France 2018-2020
A remarkable transformation, but one that could be undone if cities are not bold in how they imagine the traffic of tomorrow . There is therefore no better time to rethink the way we travel, while reducing the circulation of carbon-emitting vehicles from a bygone era.
Globally, sales of e-bikes are booming and represent the future of urban mobility. With nearly two-thirds of daily trips to reach work less than 5 km away, it only takes 20 minutes to complete this trip by electric bike .
The momentum in favor of the VAE has only just begun and the year 2022 will most certainly achieve a new record for sales of electric bicycles.
With the year 2020 that we have experienced in terms of health crisis, it is a safe bet that 2022 will bring us an even greater increase in sales of electric bicycles in France and around the world.
This means of transport meets all the criteria in terms of practicality and ease of use for getting to work every day. Take part in the change of autonomous travel and we can only advise you to come and try our models of electrically assisted bicycles in store , in Paris or Lyon.
