Seattle’s Rad Power Bikes

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The Pedego Electric Bike store in St. Louis normally closes for the month of February because there are not enough sales to justify staying open through the winter.To get more news about fatest ebike, you can visit magicyclebike.com official website.

This year, with an unusually large number of phone calls coming through, the store reopened early. February wound up being a “bonanza of a month” at the store, according to Pedego CEO Don DiCostanzo, who oversees the e-bike brand’s 208 dealerships across North America.To get more news about 52V Ebike, you can visit magicyclebike.com official website.
“We’re seeing a big spike in orders coming in way ahead of the season,” says DiCostanzo. “Every month there’s another record.”To get more news about himiway ebike, you can visit magicyclebike.com official website.

Other e-bike brands and merchants in the U.S. tell a similar story: Sales are rising faster than expected, above already high expectations set by a pandemic boom. While the cause is hard to pin down — eased pandemic restrictions and the return to the office might play a part — most point to high fuel prices as a contributing factor.

Gregg’s Cycle, one of the largest bike retailers in the Seattle area, just had its best February since it opened in 1932. “It was across the board, but e-bikes were a big percentage of that,” longtime general manager Marty Pluth says. “I think that was a result of the fuel hikes.”

Seattle e-bike startup Rad Power Bikes surveys its customers at checkout about their reasons for buying. An increasing number, according to co-founder and CEO Mike Radenbaugh, cite rising fuel costs.“Just as the desire for safe and socially distanced transportation created another category of consumers for e-bikes, higher fuel prices do the same thing,” Radenbaugh says. “It layers growth on top of already fast growth.”

I spend most of my day chatting with people that are either importers, brand managers or retailers of electric bikes,” says Ed Benjamin, founder and chairman of the Light Electric Vehicle Association. “And they’re already telling me that people are coming in and asking about and buying electric bikes as personal transportation.”

At Dutch e-bike maker VanMoof, sales over the past few weeks have been twice as high as the company’s projections. “We’re attributing that to rising gas prices,” says VanMoof co-founder Taco Carlier in an email. Electric scooter and e-bike sharing companies are also feeling the lift.

Earlier this week, Bird Global founder and CEO Travis VanderZanden said gas prices were helping to drive demand in the first quarter of this year. The company says it plans to unveil an ad campaign with the tagline “Give gas the Bird,” including billboards in New York City’s Times Square and in San Francisco. Bird’s chief competitor Lime, which operates in more than 50 U.S. cities including Seattle and Spokane, says the number of rides taken on its scooters and bikes was up by nearly two-thirds in February compared to last year.For some, the frenzy is reminiscent of the Bike Boom of the early 1970s, when U.S. sales more than doubled in the span of four years, driven at least in part by gasoline price shocks. “History repeats itself,” says Pedego’s DiCostanzo, who worked pumping gas at the time.

Though he can’t prove it, DiCostanzo is convinced that rising fuel prices are driving sales. “I’m not going to tell you it’s all because of fuel,” he says. “But I absolutely believe it’s acting as a catalyst to get more people to consider alternate forms of transportation.”To be sure, the situation in the 1970s was more dire, with rationing and long lines at gas stations.

“The frantic pace of bicycle sales during the Bike Boom was people who were thinking, ‘I’m not going to have any transportation,'” says Benjamin of LEVA, who worked assembling Schwinn bikes in Louisville, Kentucky, at the time. This time around, buyers simply want to save money.

“People right now are looking to avoid high fuel prices,” Radenbaugh says. “What are their options? A $70,000-to-$150,000 electric car that takes nine months to arrive isn’t very scalable and isn’t very inclusive.”