Already massive in China and popular in Europe, electric bikes are making inroads in the US. An MIT engineer thinks his throwback design will win over city dwellers
It’s 75 degrees, a warm day in San Francisco, but Adam Vollmer isn’t sweating as he mounts a steady grade toward Mission Dolores Park.
“I used to hate biking to work,” he says as he pedals along. “There’s this hill by my house that just pitches straight up a wall. Now it’s not so bad.” That’s because Vollmer, 36, a mechanical engineer with the trim build of an endurance athlete, can always get a boost from his bike’s hidden motor.
As the CEO and founder of Faraday, a four-year-old electric-bike company, he believes he can carve out a profitable slice of the nascent US market for e-bikes. The target customer for his $2,500 machines: People who want to get from point A to point B in a dense urban environment where driving and parking can be a nightmare. Many commuters favour e-bikes over manual models because they allow you to zip to work at speeds of up to 20 mph without breaking a sweat. Others simply think they’re fun. And ageing boomers, who may have given up riding because of arthritic knees or poor fitness, find that e-bikes are getting them back on the road.
Faraday riders have options. If they don’t push the blue power button on the back of the controller, a rectangular box the size of a large wallet that sits below the seat, the Faraday works like a regular bike. Once the motor, which is embedded in the bike’s front hub, is turned on, the head- and tail-lights illuminate and a thumb switch on the left handlebar can select medium or high power. Start pedalling and a sensor in the crank activates the motor. The harder the rider pumps, the greater the motorised help, making San Francisco’s hills feel like flats.
Last year, e-bike sales in the US came to $400 million, up from $100 million in 2012, according to figures compiled by Edward Benjamin, chairman of the Light Electric Vehicle Association, an e-bike trade group. That’s tiny compared with Europe’s 2015 sales of $5 billion and China’s sales of $10.8 billion. But Chinese commuters use e-bikes because of economic necessity and choking pollution. Europeans have long accepted bikes, including electronic models, as a way of commuting. In the US, where car culture prevails and cycling has traditionally been viewed as recreation, e-bikes are just now catching on. “The US is roughly ten years behind Europe,” says Benjamin. Even so, more than 150 e-bike brands crowd the American market (see graphic). The two biggest US-based e-bike makers, both eight years old: Pedego, in Fountain Valley, California, and ProdecoTech, in Oakland Park, Florida.
Even carmakers have signalled an interest in e-bikes. Back in 1997, Lee Iacocca tried to start an e-bike company, EV Global Motors, but he wanted to sell the bikes through car dealers. It flopped within three years. Last October, at GM’s global business conference in Milford, Michigan, the company showed a rendering of a concept e-bike. “As we look at the trend in urbanisation,” says a GM spokesman, “we want to make sure we are exploring all the possibilities to help people move around.” Likewise in 2015, Ford developed prototypes for three foldable e-bikes.
(This story appears in the 14 October, 2016 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)