ELECTRIC BIKES
Electric bikes are the perfect way to get us out of our cars – and keep us fitter, too. Here’s everything you need to know to join our European neighbours in the two-wheeled green revolution. This is cycling… but not as you knew it!
My cycling skills are rusty and my joints likewise, so can a bike with a battery help me recapture the pleasure of pedal power? I’m about to discover. A government-backed pilot scheme, Making Cycling E-asier, is offering a month’s free e-bike loan as part of a push to encourage active travel for everyday journeys.
It’s not before time. E-bikes could be a game-changer in the battle to cut carbon emissions by persuading us to leave our cars at home for short trips – way less huff and puff than a ‘normal’ bike but you still get to avoid congestion and parking woes, and feel virtuous at the same time. Yet Britain is falling way behind in this particular cycling race.
Europe has quite literally overtaken us. Sales of e-bikes in the UK shrank by 5% from 165,000 in 2021 to 155,000 in 2022. Meanwhile, in Germany two million were sold in 2022, with carmakers Audi and Porsche even offering their own luxury models.
And 750,000 e-bikes were sold in France in 2022; a friend on a recent holiday reported constantly being left for dust by eightysomethings whizzing past on batter y-powered wheels along the French cycle paths, with practically everyone except British tourists using e-bikes. Why are we so behind? It’s at least partly a lack of government incentives and support, say experts. After all, these are expensive products. ‘Incentives to boost e-bike uptake would represent excellent value for taxpayers in terms of offering a real low-cost alternative transport,’ points out Peter Eland at the Bicycle Association. ‘The cost would be very modest in comparison with the sums spent encouraging the take-up of electric cars, for example.’
In contrast, there are almost 300 tax incentives and grant schemes for cycling across Europe; France leads the way with the ‘Bike Bonus’, a grant of up to €400 (about £350) to buy any kind of bike, including e-bikes.
‘The financial incentives are one thing, but safe and convenient infrastructure is really important, and France has invested in that too,’ says Holger Haubold of the Brussels-based European Cyclists’ Federation. ‘The UK still has a lot to do in that respect. I cycled in London and was surprised that many cyclists often share the same roads as motorists.’
Currently, Jersey is the UK’s hot spot for electric bikes, where grants of £300 are on offer towards an e-bike and £600 towards an e-cargo bike. Although the government under Boris Johnson pledged to make half of all urban journeys cycling or walking by 2030, the budget was first underspent and then halved last year (2023), effectively cutting a
