As the dawn to a new decade approaches, thoughts about technological advancements in the 2010s haven’t been that far away from our minds.
Haven’t you seen numerous articles on the pieces of tech that are already obsolete yet they were the in-thing at the beginning of this decade? Windows phones instantly come to mind.
And while we’re on the subject of things becoming obsolete, why shouldn’t we talk about the inventions set to dominate the 2020s?
According to The Verge, one such invention will be the electric bike. Thought it’d be the electric vehicle, no? They’re out because Tesla is already doing a good job establishing their dominance.
Ubiquitous Much? Not Just Yet
Unfortunately, their two-wheeled counterparts have been lagging behind. Interestingly, it’s not that they haven’t been in existence. It’s just that they haven’t had reached the seemingly ubiquitous state that electric vehicles did.
And just so you know, consumers in the United States haven’t been all that interested in them. In 2013, e-bike sales in the US totaled to 185,000 compared to 1.8 million sales in Europe.
All the same, this shouldn’t lead you into believing that Europeans have been that much into e-bikes either. From 2006 to 2012, e-bike sales in the continent constituted to less than 1% of bike sales each year.
Over the past couple of years or so, the negative mindset against electric bikes started to change, and sales began to improve.
This was all thanks to indisputable improvements to the type of battery used to power the two-wheeled machine, and analysts project that the turn of the decade will start the e-bike dominance.
Insane Predictions
Earlier in the month, Deloitte released the company’s annual telecommunications, media, and technology predictions. According to the report, they estimate that in the next three years, 130 million electric bikes will have been sold globally.
It sure does sound insane, no? And indeed, it is, but the company must have done their research to come up with such a figure. It’s not like Deloitte to get things wrong, and we the general public know that.
According to them, this spike will be because most people will change their mode of transportation to work in favor of these bikes. Their research shows that as from 2019-2022, there’ll be a 1%-point increase in the number of individuals who bike to work.
And while manual bikes are what we know and love, we all know how disruptive technology can be to an already existing industry, don’t we? Just think back to the days of the landline, and how mobile phones, and particularly smartphones, did to their predecessors.
According to Jeff Loucks who’s an executive at Deloitte though, the use of e-bikes in the US won’t spread out evenly. As their investigations show, busy cities will show the best adoption rates, while those in rural areas will still need some convincing.
As it so happens, Deloitte is not the only analyst predicting a shift in favor of electric bikes. Guidehouse analyst Ryan Citron is of the same opinion, although he predicts figures that are slightly less.
According to him, the next three years will result in the sale of at least 113 million electric bikes. Citron gives the same reason as Deloitte for why he expects the huge shift.