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I think this might be more of a US/Canada-centric view.
The Specialized Turbo Levo line is over 10 years old. The Canyon Spectral:ON line is over 8 years old. Those are just two examples of model lineage/aging, but they were released to capitalise on an already-growing market. In Europe, eBikes are huge, and they totally dwarf mountain bike sales. This isn't a recent phenomenon - it's been the case for a while now.
All the reports from shops are that they don't really sell many/any mountain bikes over the £/€3,000ish mark - once consumers get to that price point, they opt for an eBike instead. There are outliers who'll buy a top-end mountain bike, but that juicy middle of the market seems to have been ceded almost completely to eBikes now.
Anecdotally, eBikes are also 'growing the pie' more than regular mountain bikes can/could. I'm one of the few mountain bike hold-outs in my area, with everyone else being well-established on eBikes. I've also seen a lot more new riders showing up on the trails who have either come from other sports (like moto), had injuries that meant they couldn't cope with pedalling a mountain bike, wanted to get into riding with partner/family, etc. - all of whom are on eBikes.
Replying to another poster:
I think this is also not necessarily reflective of the market as it is. I'm sure there is hope people will buy the new-new, but now there are over-the-air updates for all the major brands, I don't think that's as much of an issue as it used to be. Shimano/Bosch/Avinox have all released firmware updates that bump power/torque figures.
In terms of pricing, it's worth bearing in mind where the market is going with this. The new Amflow bikes are very competitively priced (under the £/€5k mark, from memory). Propain's new eBike is around that same price point. I think a few other brands are also pushing to create better value/lower priced bikes too as they realise that's where there is more growth to be had. Almost every bike shop I see online offers 0% finance and other deals like that too to help lure people in.
There will still be 'halo' products which are insanely highly priced, but that's always been the case for mountain bikes (and most other industries) too.
Just for context, I'm not an eBike apologist, and have no interest in buying one of my own - this is just what I'm seeing this side of the pond.
In my group of pals most people are riding whatever enduro bike they purchased since Covid. Quite a few have put what would essentially be the parts package cost of a new bike upgrading their now 4-6 year old frame.
I imagine most people will end up with an e-bike. The wealthier folk will get the latest and greatest and sell the used stuff to the less wealthy of us. Once the market is as saturated with e-bikes as it currently is with pedal bikes, well the industry will be right where it is now with pedal bikes.
Now the flip side is e biking is a far more accessible sport than regular mtb time wise and fitness wise. So perhaps it will grow the pool of participants.
Leasing is becoming a pretty big piece of the market in Europe, at least for urban/commuting bikes.
Decathlon has a program at around 35 Euro/mth for 3 years. They acquired 65% of Bikeleasing Service GmbH at a valuation of 525 million Euro last year. Lease A Bike, PON affiliated, works with a lot of corporations to run leasing programs in the 75 Euro/mth range. JobRad is another leasing provider that just announced expansion into other countries to sell refurbished bikes coming off of lease.
Quote from a Bike EU article back in March "Germany shows what happens when convenience and peace of mind take centre stage. Employer-based leasing is now widely established, and private lease and financing options are also popular. German consumers primarily see leasing as a way to reduce the risk of theft or technical issues." Separate article "With 750,000 company bikes leased in 2024 alone and 2.1 million in the streets, the German market has seen incredible annual growth rates of 23% — resulting in a turnover of €3.1 billion."
Edit to add: Cycling Industries Europe proposed several steps to the EU last year to support leasing https://cyclingindustries.com/fileadmin/Unlocking_the_potential_of_bike…
I know I'm repeating common talking points that have been said over and over for years. But every so often it hits me, as I don't really follow regular mtb pricing too much anymore. But when I saw the tallboy release the other day, and it is a beautiful bike, all I could think was "How could anyone consider the entry level spec for 6k when a similar spec Amflow PR for 4,5k exists?"
Apples and oranges, I'm not saying the ebike will be better for everything, but from a simple "add up all the parts on those frames and determine which one should cost more"
Ampler is gone too
https://urbanbike.news/en/ampler-files-for-bankruptcy-why-a-pioneer-of-lightweight-e-bikes-is-being-hit-hard/
I appreciate the reaction and I share the same gut reaction, but fundamentally, how is this substantially different than what is going on for those customers who keep their high end bikes for 1-2 seasons? To me the key difference is that there's a reallocation of risk from the back end of the deal to the front end via contract rather than seeing what the used bike market is like when the customer goes to sell it.
This seems completely unnecessary though. Financing and leasing cars makes sense because they are necessary in most of western society, but blingy brand new mountain bikes are not. You can have almost as much fun and exercise on a $700 marketplace hardail as a $12,000 ebike. Financing toys just seems like a bad idea, yet a ton of people already do it for SXS, boats, and motorcycles. Nice bikes are cool, but going into debt or leasing something because you need to keep up with Joe Shmo next door who has a Mercedes Sprinter van and pivot ebike with titanium bolts is not it.
I agree with you that financing toys is generally stupid, especially for those that cannot afford them in the first place. What I will say is that the rise of consumer financing of everything is proliferating and bikes are already no exception. Klarna and FinanceIt and all sorts of 19% interest financing options already exist to walk out of a bike store with a 12,000 fuel ex you can't really afford.
What I'm not getting is how it is different for the customer who can afford to flip their 12,000 bike every year or two. They buy it for 12,000 and two years later sell it for 6. When I worked at a bike store, this was a significant number of customers. Frankly it seems more convenient for them if they just hand it back to the store having paid the same total amount rather than trying to arrange a private sale themselves.
I feel like you answered your own question when you said "a ton of people already do it for SXS, boats, and motorcycles."
If the SXS, boat, and motorcycle people are making money by financing their overpriced toys, why would high-end bike companies not want to get in on the action with their overpriced toys?
Yes, financing a high-end shiny ebike is completely unnecessary, unwise, financially imprudent, all of that. But so are cigarettes and gambling, and they're doing great!
Thankfully I can also finance my $2k "Founders" moto helmet... https://www.foxracing.com/founders.html
My concern is it may incentivize brands to charge more for bikes to push people into leases because monthly payments are a more reliable business model than lump sums.
I doubt bikes will be spared from the subscriptification of the U.S. economy.
I've financed one bike on a 6month no interest plan and that was painless, but I was very aware of what would happen should something go akimbo in my household. Had the cash, but I like to maintain a bit of liquidity for those Oh Shit moments. It was far from a 12k purchase however. IME based on my localish area, most of the folks I see on 'superbikes' are industry/shop affiliated and come from homes where 'trust fund' is the norm. Those same folx took a bit of a hit in the pants during Covid Times as their normal buy-at-EP-flip-next-year-for-the-same-to-finance-latest-and-greatest-at-EP when they couldn't get the latest n greatest. Again, small sample set, but there was one cat who was very perturbed by the brand denying an EP since that meant he'd have to ride his current rig and its additional depreciation would make the next purchase harder to finance. Another sold his at a bit of a profit early but was left without a new bike for the season. I decided then I had to ride with other folx more often.
Y’all are acting like bike financing (which is what leasing is, btw) is some brand-new idea. It isn’t. The basic tools have been around forever. In its most archaic form, its not all that different from opening a store card at your favorite big-box retailer.
What bikes still lack is a real underwriting structure where the lender can tie the loan to the asset itself. When I finance a $100,000 truck, the bank holds the title until I pay it off. If I stop making payments, they can repossess the truck, sell it at auction, and recover at least some of their capital. The risk is imperfect, but it is manageable because the asset is legally secured.
Bikes do not really work that way. They do not have titles. There is no clean lien process. There is no standardized way to attach the loan to the bike as collateral. So from the lender’s perspective, it is basically unsecured consumer credit attached to a depreciating, portable, easy-to-resell asset.
If the industry could solve that, I suspect financing terms would get more attractive. Not ZIRP-era fantasy attractive, but better than what we see today.
Part of the reason financing still feels weird in the bike industry is cultural. The high-end pedal-bike world is dominated by a relatively wealthy, highly educated customer base that often treats financing as gauche, irresponsible, or beneath the category.
That is not necessarily true in adjacent powersports categories. Side-by-sides, PWCs, motorcycles, snowmobiles, and trucks are financed all the time. Those customers are often buying expensive toys too, but the cultural norms around debt, ownership, and monthly payments are different. I say this as someone who has worked in both spaces, and even offered financing in the aftermarket powersports space.
So yes, the mechanics matter. But the culture matters too.
Bike financing is not new. What is missing is secured lending infrastructure... and maybe a customer base willing to admit that $10,000 bikes already behave like powersports products, even if the industry still wants to pretend they don’t.
😮
speechless
Subscriptions work best (from the companies perspective..) with digital products that can be locked to a monthly subscription, so your electronics will be disabled or severely restricted if you don't keep it up. Normally the up front cost is significantly cheaper than the alternatives but you then don't have the choice but to keep paying them - see HP printers for one of the more egregious examples where you need to pay every month to use the ink thats already in the printer!
I was thinking about this a bit today. So a question for Jeff. I was wondering if there is an additional challenge with bike financing in that there isn't a legion of accountants working out the residuals...?? Which are fairly well understood for vehicles but I wonder about powersports.
Less practical for analog for sure but remotely disabling an ebike motor due to a missed payment sounds plausible. GPS/phone integration could make it easier to track/repo
Because one guy has 12k in his bank account and is ok losing 6k per year. The other guy probably is already in negative equity and thinks he can cover a few extra hundred a month.
When you buy a car, you have insurance and you hope that if you take care of it you will get a large part of it back. I hope newcomers understand that in the absolute best case scenario an 8k ebike is worth 4k a year later, and more or less 1k for the components after 4 years.
The auto industry realized years ago, there are only between X and Y number of cars sold per year. Yes, a brand can take more market share to increase revenue. The easier thing to do is to make cars more expensive. Add features, electronics, subscription-based technology and the like. Make the cars more expensive, sell just as many, more revenue and likely more profit.
The bike industry could be seeing the same. Bikes are getting more technology, more electronics, and more expensive. I think one of the first subscriptions from a component or bike manufacturer that I expect is Flight Attendant. I could see that going the route that Trailforks went. Create a technology and front load the cost of development. As users provide more data, the product becomes even better and more capable, and the technology becomes more accepted and desired, move it behind a paywall. I have no idea if that is going to happen or that is their plan, but that seems logical to me.
E-bikes tend to be tighter margins than traditional bikes. So brands will need to find a way to make a solid margin to be able to sustain the shift from analog to more volume being on the E side. At the end of the day we NEED bike brands to be profitable. Yes, it is a passion industry, but the dollars have to follow for them to be able to sustain and grow.
With regards to the financing side, auto dealers tend to make more money on the back end than on the front end in most transactions. They make money on extended warranties, pre-paid service, additional products, and yes, financing. That other industries follow of course makes sense. Leasing has already worked very well in Europe and from what I have heard, it has stabilized the prices of used bikes a bit too. (Correct me if that is inaccurate Euros)
One other benefit the lease programs is a good supply of relatively low mileage used cars to sell... So, the person who always wants the newest thing keeps making lease payments, and the people who don't mind a used cars have options that will usually be on the higher end of the price scale due to the terms of the lease..
I think it's more likely subscriptions will come in the eBike drive unit side first.
Look at the latest gen Levo. The regular version is 666W (#edgy) and 101Nm. The S-Works version is 850W and 111Nm. As far as I'm aware, it's just a software limitation - the hardware is identical.
Shimano introduced an over-the-air update for the EP801 to add 'Race mode'. Bosch and Avinox released an over-the-air update for more power and torque. It's not hard to envision a future where you've got a tiered, paid-for power hierarchy.
The industry was happy to effectively paywall geometry by speccing cheaper bikes with dated geo for no reason (64 degree head angles are free), so I don't think they'd find it hard ethically to paywall power/torque.
Overall though, I'm not sure I agree with what people are saying here about the industry shifting to sell more expensive bikes. I just don't think that reflects the reality of where most brands are going, and what is selling. There are headline-grabbing $10,000+ bikes, but they are the halo models and have all the bells and whistles that will bump the retail price up to those levels. The media will also tend to focus on those as they're the reviews that will generate clicks, whereas reviewing a generic $3k perfectly adequate trail bike won't.
When it comes to eBikes especially, it feels like people are becoming more price sensitive, and I think that's reflected in the number of lower-priced Avinox-powered bikes that came out during the Avinox-pocalypse that happened when that new motor launched. Again, only anecdotally, but speaking to the eBike riders I see on the trails here, they're all shifting to lower-priced bikes as they've realised that they can without sacrificing performance. Whereas people used to always be riding bikes like high end Levos/S-Works Levos, they're now on Marins, Amflows, YTs, etc.
The cost of living situation is affecting more people, and those people are having to save where they can. In the UK, a base spec Levo is over £1,000 more than a base spec Amflow, but the base spec Amflow comes with more power, more torque, a carbon frame not alloy, better suspension, better drivetrain, etc. It's hard to look past that. That's a conversation for Jeff's other thread though 😉
0% APR financing actually does make more sense financially, assuming you have the cash on hand already and might invest the savings as you pay it off.
The thing that’s different with e-bikes is that their range will get slightly better every few years or so for the foreseeable future. It’s hard for a normal human to understand why the new Nomads kinematic is “better” but a longer range battery is easy. More ride time.
Bike marketing and product decisions are so confusing and nerdy to normal people that this is a welcome change in my view. It’s easy to understand and directly affects the ride in a big way.
Fair point. But, what if power ends up capped because of regulations and the range of whatever riding you do in your area is sufficiently met by the current range on your e-bike?
We’re probably not there yet, but if every ride you do is under a certain distance/time/elevation gain and your current battery meets that, why buy a new bike just because of more range you’ll effectively never use?
Guess I will keep my mechanical normal bike and ride it like someone who purchased photoshop in 2014
It's like comparison of digital cameras. Lens quality? Sensor size and DR? Shutter implementation? Who cares, it has 600Mpix!
Because a lot of people will want it simply because it's more... They might never completely drain a 600w/hr battery, but they will drop the coin on the new model with the 800 w/hr simply because it's bigger, therefore it's better..
“E-bikes tend to be tighter margins than traditional bikes.”
Is this true on the bike company side? I crunched some rough numbers for the $14.5k Pivot Shuttle AMP’d and all of the parts—minus frame and motor—have a combined MSRP of around $8500 (please fact check me on this).
They have to be making an okay margin on the spec alone and I doubt they’re paying more than $3000 for the frame, battery, and drive unit. E-bikes take more labor to set up but I’m skeptical labor is hurting the margin that much.
When compared to the pricepoint of the Amflow PR my skepticism grows.
It's hard to find the words to express how colossally the industry will almost certainly f'ck up its initial foray into financing, leasing, and such. It seem like almost certain disaster. But after the initial carnage subsides, I could see some real positives for local bike shops and, from a sustainability standpoint, not having older ebikes end up essentially discarded. It could also be an area in which the finance bros in PE could actually make a useful contribution to the industry.
If I'm sure of anything, it's that between this potentiality and China, the future is bright for the Bikeconomics Thread.
I'm confident that the industry will make sure that the LBS gets the short end...
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