E-bike makers are increasingly taking to the columns of respected financial journals to explain the price pressures and continued shortages that look like they will be a feature of the e-bike world in 2022 and possibly beyond.
Karbon Kinetics, the company behind iconic folding e-bike Gocycle, recently appeared in the Wall Street Journal to give an explanation of their 2022 price rises. To give just one example from the article, Richard Thorpe, the designer and head of Gocycle says he is competing with auto manufacturers and online automated bots in ordering the computer chips used in the bike. With 2022 price rises factored in, the Gocycle range will now cost from $4999 to $6999 in the US with similar price rises in the UK and EU.
Pioneering US brand Pedego – one of the first on the nascent US e-bike scene – took to the columns of the UK’s Financial Times to explain in detail the problems they are facing in the global supply chain.
‘Like many other companies struggling to weather the supply chain crisis, Pedego has had to try to keep its bikes rolling as it contends with a tight market for lithium-ion battery cells, suppliers in Malaysia closing factories due to Covid-19, the skyrocketing cost of shipping, containers trapped in log-jammed ports and a semiconductor shortage. It has employed a range of tactics to cope, from shipping batteries and bike frames separately to quickly switching suppliers when there is a shortage of parts. Yet feeding the growing US demand for electric bikes is still a challenge’ explains the article.
In total Pedego ordered 37,000 bikes for 2022 but when it tried to increase that number by 10,000, it was unable to do so because the parts were unavailable. Mirroring Gocycle’s experience, Pedego’s costs have increased dramatically – the article says transport spending alone has increased from $4,000 per shipping container to $23,000.
Interestingly the article also comments ‘Throughout the industry, lower-profile brands have prospered during the pandemic and supply chain crunch due to substitution’ – i.e. largely due to the fact that for a low cost bike it is easier, and perhaps more acceptable from a customer point of view, to switch component brands. Hence Pedego’s priciest product, the $5,495 Elevate, will be out of stock throughout all of 2022.
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