e-cargo bike sector growing in Germany

Sales of e-cargo bikes grow by over 40% in Germany in 2020 with over 100,000 bikes sold.

Sales of traditional cargo bikes grew by 19% in 2019 with again over 103,000 Non-motorized cargo bikes sold. The whole German bike market grew by 17% to over 5 million units in 2020, a lot of growth in the bike market in Germany is due to the covid effect with other Central European (CE) countries seeing similar growth for the ebike and Non-motorized bike sector.

The two-wheel industry association today presented data on the 2020 German bicycle market. Sales of e-cargo bikes rose by over 40 percent.

In absolute numbers, the estimated sales of e-cargo bikes in the ZIV rose from 54,400 in 2019 to 78,000 in 2020. As in the previous year, that is four percent of all e-bikes sold in Germany. E-cargo bikes are growing at the same rate as the booming e-bike market as a whole: by an impressive 43 percent.

Growth was lower for non-motorized cargo bikes, with estimated sales increasing from 21,150 to 25,200. That is still 0.5 percent of all bicycle sales in Germany, which rose by a total of 17 percent to 5.04 million in 2020.

Cargo bikes with and without E together cracked the 100,000 mark for the first time with 103,200 sales in 2020. Over three quarters of these were models with an electric motor. The trend continues to rise.

The ZIV market data for cargo bikes is slightly below the result of the 1st European Cargo Bike Industry Survey from spring 2020. In the anonymous European survey, 38 cargo bike manufacturers estimated that their sales of cargo bikes across Europe in 2020 will increase by 53 percent. 16 of the 38 manufacturers named Germany as their most important market in Europe.

The methodology, target group and geographical focus of the European manufacturer survey and the ZIV estimate, however, differ considerably. The ZIV press release on the entire 2020 bicycle market is documented below.

In spite of all the joy about the ongoing rapid growth of the cargo bike market: Because of the federal government's car-based e-mobility funding, new registrations of e-cars grew significantly faster in 2020 than sales of e-cargo bikes. Namely by 207 percent to a total of 194,163 fully electric cars.

In 2018, e-cargo bikes were still ahead of e-cars. But then came the nationwide purchase premium for private e-cars: drive turnaround instead of traffic turnaround!

It took a long time for the federal government to introduce a nationwide purchase premium for all commercial e-cargo bikes on March 1, 2021. But private cargo bikes continue to receive nothing. It is different in Austria: Here there is a nationwide grant of 1,000 euros for private and commercial cargo bikes - with or without an E.

How good that there are general elections in September! We are calling for a traffic turnaround instead of a drive turnaround: 25 percent purchase premium for all cargo bikes & 100 million euros for a federal cargo bike sharing program! Who wants to join in?