|
|
|
|
|
|
The Coming Age of the Electric BicycleBy Edward Benjamin Open Access Article Originally Published: December 18, 2009
Annoying, smug question for electric vehicle people: “What is the only truly successful electric vehicle selling in the tens of millions of units, that is on the road today?” Answer: Electric bicycles. Another annoying, smug question: “What vehicle business has been unaffected by the current world wide great recession?” Answer: Electric bicycles. Depending upon who you listen to, the first electric bicycle patent was either in 1898 or 1909. But for sure this is an old idea, whose time has not only come, but has been here in a big way for a while. Electric bike efforts were made in the 70’s in China and Japan, but the convergence of technology and price that allows today’s electric bikes really happened in 1994 when Yamaha patented and started to produce the PAS bicycles. The Chinese quickly overtook the Japanese in innovation, volume and use- breaking a million units per year about 8 years ago. The rest of the world has only started using electric bikes in large numbers in the last 4-5 years. Today the total world market for electric bicycles is more than 24 million pieces. That makes electric bikes #4 in the world line up of vehicles: Bicycles are about 130 million per year, cars and light trucks about 65 million per year, light motorcycles about 65 million per year. The China Bicycle Association states that there are more than 100 million ebikes in use in China today. The markets look something like this: China: 21-22 million
Reader Comments
A valid email address and confirmation is required before your comment can be posted. Comments not confirmed within
24 hours are automatically deleted.
5 comments so far...
|
a d v e r t i s e r
September ePOLL
Do you agree that the $100 billion invested in technology innovation was an appropriate expenditure by the American government?
RELATED ARTICLES
a d v e r t i s e r
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Learn How Your Organization Can Appear Here Too. Click the Advertising Link Below
| |||
|