- When buying your electric bicycle, it should be stated how long the bicycle and the battery are expected to last for normal use.

- The interesting thing will then be the cost over time, rather than the purchase price. A cheap bike does not become cheap if it breaks down quickly and you have to buy a new one, says Mattias Lindahl, appealing to the criticism from electric bike customers who say that their Biltema batteries have broken unexpectedly quickly.

Biltema writes that one is positive to the idea of ​​an industry standard for marking the life cycle of electric bicycles.

Important to make demands

But it is important for both consumers and politicians to set tougher requirements, for the knowledge of how long the products are expected to last, it already exists with the companies, according to Lindahl.

- When developing products, it is important to ensure that they meet warranty times, otherwise you will receive higher warranty costs.

- And if you are targeting a low-price market, you may not choose product components with the highest performance. In many cases, companies also want to sell service and spare parts, says Lindahl.

Friendly?

“Electric bike - good for the environment,” writes Biltema on the website. And sure, it can be good if more people buy electric bicycles, if it makes us drive less car, according to Mattias Lindahl. But in that case it must be compared to the environmental impact of the batteries when they are manufactured and used.

- A lot of rare earth metals are used in production, which are problematic in mining.

- And then we get another problem if the batteries do not last very long. Especially if we dispose of batteries prematurely, which could have been repaired. That we do not use the components fully. For today, there is no recycling of the rare earth metals, so everything goes to waste.

- So if we buy electric bicycles, we must place demands on recycling, but above all, long service life and repairability, says Mattias Lindahl.

Follow the whole Plus review of the problems with electric bicycles here.