Market data: electric bike sales driving value and volume in Holland
New market information released by Dutch industry associations RAI and BOVAG is has shown both volume and value being driven by electric bike sales, but also by higher-end cycle purchases.
The data is rich in information about the market’s performance over time, revealing that the Dutch are Europe’s third largest consumer of electric bikes, following Germany and France. It is now believed that 3.4 million are in circulation in Holland, a figure that is triple that of seven years ago.
From a value perspective that is boosting the takings of retailers, who now report overall average sales prices rising. In 2017 just 4% of bike sales registered above €2,700, but in 2021 that figure was 19%. The average sales price is now €1,747 with specialists and that’s up 12.2% year-on-year.
Adding further weight to the value, though in far smaller quantities, the speed pedelec has nudged past 28,000 units from 9,000 two years prior. The Mobility in Figures Tweewielers report does a good job of cataloguing which brands are driving this niche part of the market, putting specialist label Stromer way out in front, followed by Riese & Müller and Gazelle.
Unit sales did actually dip by 175,000 from 2020, when there was the pronounced Covid driven Bike Spike, to 3.4 million units in 2021. Despite this, the value of those sales rose 6%, in large part down to the growth in eBikes sold at retail. Electric bike sales in Holland now make up half of the transactions for bikes.
As any visitor will attest, the number of bicycles in use in Holland is eye-opening when considering cycling’s potential as a transport form; to be precise, BOVAG and RAI’s estimate is that there are 23.4 million bicycles in circulation and that’s a figure that’s a third higher since the turn of the millennium.
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