The recent Bicycle Association (BA) Market Data Annual Report reports that UK e-bike sales volumes fell by 5% in 2024 compared to 2023, despite heavy discounting in the market. The BA estimate that around 146,000 e-bikes were sold here – that’s 9% of the total bike sales market. Perhaps surprisingly, sales of non-electric bikes fell by less – some 4% in 2024. The trend in recent years has been for e-bike sales to trend better than non-e-bikes.

This latest drop continues the long post-COVID downturn which began in the second half of 2021, but the BA suggest that the situation may soon start to improve as they noted the overall cycling market performance flattened during the second half of the year, after a tough first half.
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It is worth noting that some of Europe’s more mature e-bike markets have also shown some sales declines sales in recent years – though countries such as The Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland have consistently posted a 50% or more e-bike share of the overall bike sales market.
> E-bikes now outselling unassisted bikes in Belgium and Germany
In terms of sheer numbers of e-bikes sold Germany is way ahead of the field with 2.05 million e-bikes sales in 2024 according to German trade association ZIV. That is a 2.5% drop compared to the previous year though e-bike sales there have not dropped below 2 million units since 2020.

The reason for the vastly superior continental e-bike sales has been the cause of much speculation; certainly superior quality, safer infrastructure is one oft-quoted reason, as higher levels of daily cycling naturally lead to larger volumes of bike and e-bike sales. Some have pointed to specific factors such as the huge popularity of e-mtbs in the German market (they make up around 39% of e-bike sales according to ZIV). Strong sales of around 750,000 e-bikes a year in the French market have purportedly been buoyed up by generous government subsidies.
> E-bikes now the biggest selling bike type in the Netherlands
Conversely factors anecdotally causing consumer uncertainty in the UK e-bike market include concerns about battery safety and negative coverage in the general media.






















