About a week ago, the following story caught my eye:
For the first time on record, bicycles have outsold cars in Spain.
Higher taxes on fuel and on new cars have prompted cash-strapped Spaniards to opt for two wheels instead of four. Last year, 780,000 bicycles were sold in the country – compared to 700,000 cars. That’s due to a 4 percent jump in bike sales, and a 30 percent drop in sales of new cars.
And this is not primarily about a wave of government policies promoting cycling, or an outbreak of climate activism among the young … its the result of the crisis. As this NPR story concludes:
“We are learning every day, about the crisis. Maybe it’s not changing the things that we thought at the beginning would change – the politicians, the banks, that kind of things. But it’s changing our minds,” says Juan Salenas, another cyclist at the Bici Crítica rally. “We spend less. We try to live with [what we have, and be] more happy. And we try to keep what we have, because maybe we will lose it tomorrow.”
Spain is experiencing a shift in which both conventional and eBike sales are increasing, but as The Economist reports, in Germany, France and the Netherlands, where transport cycling culture is more entrenched, the shift is within bicycle sales:
In the Netherlands one bicycle in six sold is an e-bike. In Germany the cycle industry expects electric-bike sales to grow by 13% this year, to 430,000 (the most sold in any European country), and to account for 15% of the market before long. In France sales of traditional bicycles fell by 9% in 2012 while those of e-bikes grew by 15%.
E-bikes are catching on as people move to cities and add concern about pollution and parking to worry over petrol prices and global warming. Frank Jamerson, who produces the Electric Bikes Worldwide Reports, estimates sales at around 34m this year and perhaps 40m in 2015. China buys most of them and makes even more, with European sales of 1.5m in second place.
So, as events in DC have unraveled to the point were the outcome that the Democrats are fighting for is to fund the government at austerity “sequester” levels, this Sunday Train looks at Electric Bikes.
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