Cargo bikes: SUVs on cycle paths are experiencing an undreamt-of boom

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On a Monday morning, half an hour before the store opens, two dozen people are queuing in front of a small bicycle shop in Hamburg's Schanzenviertel.

She later invites the sales staff, who have been increased at short notice, in.

Many customers just take a hasty test drive.

As if they couldn't wait to get to the checkout counter and put together their dream bike.

4700 euros plus a few hundred for lock and insurance?

Eight to twelve weeks delivery time?

Obviously no problem, customers nod everything and leaf through the brochures on display.

"The Cargonaut has an eye-catching silhouette that stands out from the mainstream," promises one manufacturer.

"The SUV among e-bikes."

It has been 30 or 40 years since residents in Copenhagen's autonomous Christiania district began converting steel bikes into clunky tricycles with a large wooden box, thus transforming them into emission-free everyday means of transport.

Since then, the cargo bike has come a long way to the middle-class center of the energy transition in Germany.

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The bulky vehicles with names like “Urban Arrow”, “Babboe” or “Bakfiets” are no longer reserved for individualists in the drop-off zone of the local Waldorf school; they roll through the cities in droves.

Last year 76,000 cargo bikes were sold in Germany, three quarters of which were electric.

This is what the figures from the two-wheel industry association ZIV say.

It's still a niche in the bike market, but the number of sales recently rose by 40 percent within a year.

Many German manufacturers have added their own cargo bikes to their model ranges, according to a ZIV spokesman.

"We expect that the demand will continue to grow significantly."

Up to 200 kilograms in weight

Massive state funding means that families buy a cargo bike for daycare trips and other errands.

Flashing chrome and with high social prestige, they accelerate up to 200 kilos of moving mass to 25 kilometers per hour.

The cities hope that commercial deliveries will increasingly be made by cargo bike.

That means it will be tight on the country's bike paths and sidewalks.

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This does not detract from the success: Sandra Wolf cycles every morning on her “Load” cargo bike to her workplace in the Hessian Mühltal, and has been for years.

Your children are self-propelled at the age of eleven and twelve.

Now purchases end up in the storage space of your bike.

“A few years ago I was being eyed strangely.

Are you different? ”She says.

“Today I sometimes struggle to find a parking space between the other cargo bikes at the supermarket.

The streetscape is changing rapidly. "

Wolf is the managing director of Riese & Müller, the largest manufacturer of cargo bikes in Germany.

The e-bike specialist is experiencing one boom year after another.

Ten years ago he had 35 employees.

Today 550 employees develop, design, screw and sell the goods in Mühltal near Frankfurt.

The turnover is growing by 50 percent annually, currently it is 200 million euros.

The cargo bikes make up almost ten percent.

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"But the growth rates here are above average," says the managing director.

According to her estimate, there are currently just over 300,000 cargo bikes on German roads and paths.

In five years, she believes, half a million cargo bikes could be registered each year.

“It is incredibly dynamic.” At first, she only sees one limit: the German cycle path network.

E-bike industry is growing up

Similar to organic farmers and organic supermarkets, the e-bike industry has left its pioneering years behind.

It is growing, it is becoming more and more professional.

The E-motion group, one of the largest dealer networks for e-bikes, has more than 60 locations in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Here, too, cargo bikes are the fastest growing product segment.

“Buyers come from all walks of life.

Big city families, dog owners.

The rural area is also catching up, ”says spokeswoman Jenny Janson.

The dealership group's business with cargo bikes has achieved more than 200 percent growth in the past two years.

Not only do people buy more bikes, they also buy more expensive bikes.

Two years ago they would have paid an average of 4500 euros for a cargo bike.

This year the average sales price is 5100 euros.

“The cargo bike often replaces the second car,” says Janson.

A major reason is the almost blanket subsidy from taxpayers.

Depending on the city and state, the state gives between 1000 and 2000, sometimes even up to 3500 euros when buying a new e-cargo bike.

When Hamburg started a new funding program for cargo bikes in September, the funding pot of 700,000 euros was exhausted on the first day.

More precisely: after 20 minutes.

The Hanseatic city had already sponsored cargo bike buyers with 1.5 million euros last year.

Cities hope for relief

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Like other municipalities, Hamburg wants to relieve its traffic-plagued inner cities.

Parents should no longer drop their little ones off at primary school with the two-ton SUV, but with the electric bike.

Hopefully, the exploding delivery traffic could soon use significantly more cargo bikes.

"According to an EU study, 51 percent of all motorized transport could be replaced by cargo bikes," says Tobias Klein from the Institute for Urban Studies in Berlin.

Another study sees a replacement potential between eight and 23 percent for the commercial sector.

Transport service providers such as DHL and UPS are already working with microdepots in Hamburg and Munich, from which they deliver to inner cities by cargo bike and sometimes also by hand truck.

Just like in the 1920s and 1930s, when cargo bikes were already an established part of the logistics chain.

“Cargo bikes are also an interesting alternative financially for many transports in city centers,” says Klein.

He too says: The problem of competition for space is already arising.

"In order to accommodate the desired capacities, we would need bike paths 2.30 to three meters wide."

It is still mainly young city families who are fueling the cargo bike boom.

The manufacturer Riese & Müller, for example, delivered around 80 percent of its bikes with family equipment this year.

The development is accordingly aimed at safety and comfort.

Suddenly bourgeois mainstream

“Indicator, horn, ABS.

Maybe a heater for long-distance drivers too, ”says boss Sandra Wolf.

Their engineers were working on it.

Also in GPS tracking and networking.

"That goes a lot in the direction of what automakers are concerned with."

An analogy that the die-hard cargo bike scene doesn't like to hear.

For years the exotic cycle paths were more or less among themselves, and in any case politically on the good side.

You greeted each other, shared your convictions and worldview, or at least accepted it.

Now cargo cyclists are suddenly bourgeois mainstream.

How big the identity crisis is is shown by an emotional debate that a member of a Cargobiker Internet forum sparked with an anxious question: "Are we really a mobility elite or will we at some point just be the SUVs of the bicycle community?"

This text is from WELT AM SONNTAG.

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Source: WELT AM SONNTAG