A few years ago, e-bikes tended to fall into one of two categories. They were either hugely expensive allmountain machines bought by middle-aged men who wanted the latest tech and weren’t big fans of pedalling. Or they were adapted cargo bikes made by niche manufacturers for climate-conscious parents to ferry their offspring to school.
Fast-forward to 2023 and e-bikes have entered the mainstream. It’s reported that one in 20 people now owns an e-bike, and estimates are that by 2030 as many as half of the 30-million predicted bike sales in Europe at the turn of the decade will be of the motorised variety.
E-bikes are here to stay, and big manufacturers such as Trek and Specialized have made huge strides in research and development. Batteries and motors are smaller and more powerful now than when e-bikes were in their infancy. As a consequence, frame design can be kept closer to regular bikes than the hulking great machines of ten years ago. But they’ve had to raise their game to compete with new, dedicated e-bike companies like Haibike.
The global e-bike market now offers
