Berlin (dpa-Afx)-The bicycle industry continues to fight with aftermath of the Corona crisis. Last year, fewer bicycles were sold and produced in Germany than in the previous year, as the two -wheeled industry association in Berlin reported. The total turnover decreased by 10.3 percent to 6.33 billion euros.
High discounts
Among other things, high discounts have contributed to this, which were quickly granted to gross prices to clear the full camps. E-bikes in particular have become cheaper on average: across all sales channels, the average price fell by 300 euros to 2,650 euros, the association said. For a bike without a motor, customers had to pay an average of 500 euros, an increase of 30 euros since the previous year.
The second year in a row in Germany was sold with 2.05 million more e-bikes than conventional bikes that came to 1.8 million pieces. The total sales decreased by 2.5 percent compared to 2023. Compared to the record year 2020 characterized by the pandemic, the industry sold a good fifth or around 1.1 million bikes less.
Among other things, sales were 10.3 percent due to the lower final prices, but due to the still high e-bike share with 6.33 billion euros, well above the last pre-corona year 2019, as only 4.0 billion euros were redeemed.
More bikes than humans
Furthermore, a large part of the trade reports on full camp because bikes from previous years could not be fully sold. In 2024, the German manufacturers as well as the importers deliver only 3.16 million bikes to trade in Germany after 4.36 million in the previous year. Domestic production fell by 13.8 percent to 2 million vehicles. 1.4 million of them had an electric drive.
A obstacle to the further paragraph could be the longer shelf life of the bikes sold. According to the industry, the batteries and thus the entire e-bikes last significantly longer than expected and are scrapped later. As a result, the existence of e-bikes in Germany has grown to 15.7 million pieces last year. That is a good three million bikes more than the update of previous forecasts has been accepted since 2014. The association now estimates its average service life for eight to nine years.
There have long been more bicycles in Germany (88.7 million) than humans (83.6 million). However, one is far from a market saturation, says Ziv Civician Burkhard Stork./ceb/dp/jha