The owner of a Norwich e-bike shop has blamed misleading press coverage of e-bikes, and the Panorama episode fronted by Adrian Chiles in particular, for a drop-off in trade that has resulted in his shop’s closure.
Mark Watkin opened e-Velo in Halesworth, Suffolk, in 2015 and subsequently expanded into premises in the Royal Arcade in Norwich last summer.
However, both shops have now been forced to close.
Watkin said that alarmist media coverage of e-bikes had played a significant part.
“Unfortunately, the last six months have proven difficult for the business,” he told the Norwich Evening News.
“The constant bad press regarding the safety of e-bikes – in particular relating to battery fires and illegal imports – has driven demand down to the point where we could no longer operate, despite trading for 10 years.
“The media didn’t differentiate between genuine UK legal e-bikes and the overpowered ones available online, which didn’t help.”
As one prominent example, Watkin cited the Panorama episode E-Bikes: The Battle For Our Streets which aired on BBC One in January.
As we reported at the time, this programme did a terrible job of explaining why some e-bikes are road legal and others illegal. As a consequence both legal and illegal bikes were consistently lumped together, comprehensively tarring all safe, legitimate e-bikes by association.
The Bicycle Association was among those to lodge a formal complaint with the BBC.
It said the episode, “repeatedly conflates the safety and social issues surrounding the use of illegal e-motorbikes with ‘e-bikes’ and fails to make it clear that these issues are overwhelmingly not caused by (road legal) e-bikes.
“This is compounded by the juxtaposition (without distinction) of footage of both illegal e-motorbikes and road-legal e-bikes, implying that they are one and the same. This misrepresentation is against the public interest and not fair or accurate (hence in breach of BBC editorial guidelines).”
Speaking after the episode aired, Ray Wookey, the owner of an e-bike shop in south London branded the programme “troubling” and “misleading”, with the potential to “unfairly influence public opinion and undermine the efforts of responsible retailers who prioritise safety, respectful riding, and adherence to the law”.
The BBC has since defended the programme, arguing it was, “fair and impartial and clearly not an attack on the e-bike industry.”
