Dutch e-bikes

The sale of electrically assisted bicycles (e-bikes or pedelecs) is growing at a rapid rate across Europe. Within Europe, the Netherlands is one of the biggest markets for e-bike sales with 10.4 sales per 10,000 people, roughly equating to 17 per cent of all Dutch bicycle sales. Around 1 million e-bikes are now in ownership out of a total stock of 22 million bicycles for 17 million Dutch inhabitants. Whereas market data is available describing sales trends of e-bikes, there is limited understanding of the user characteristics and trip patterns.

Data and Trends

In this presentation is provided an overview of user characteristics and trip patterns of e-bike use in the Netherlands, based on cross sectional data from the Dutch National Travel Survey (NTS) and longitudinal data from the Netherlands Mobility Panel (MPN). The Dutch NTS and MPN are the first surveys of its kind to include the e-bikes as a separate modality, including user characteristics such as age and gender and trip characteristics such as distances covered and travel speed.

Characteristics of e-bike use in the Netherlands are discussed, and trip patterns and trip purposes as well as some recent trends. In addition, this presentation will show to what degree e-bikes are substituting regular bike or car trips, and whether e-bikes are facilitating longer trips that people wouldn't have done otherwise. Whether these trends and patterns are indicative of the developments in other western counties will be discussed as well.