the trade press claims that e-bike sales are rising...
15,000 is what they've risen to in this last year, so it's still peanuts for a 60 million population.
I've been monitoring the old posts as well and I do think some companies definitely do have a policy of continuous improvement - for instance the Wisper 905SE had clearly had a lot of improvements made due to Wisper monitoring issues raised on this forum - I would hope its still kept in production in 2 years time rather than abandoned for the "latest and greatest developments"!
But it's the extra price that pays for the development. The intention is for the 905 series to continue
The other issue I found was that many e-bikes seemed to be constantly out of stock with no retailers giving accurate info about stock levels - I hope this will improve too.
Again this is a size problem. Derby Cycles with Kalkhoff for example is a very big boy in Europe and they've struggled their way to 100,000 a year production. But e-bikes are very small part of that, split across different brands, each in several models and each model in 4 or 5 sizes, with distribution to several countries. You can see that for one particular model in one particular size in one particular country, there's a very high risk that the only one or two they got in the last batch have already been sold and with some while before a new batch will be received.
Size can also be a problem with Chinese supplies, and added to that is the three months from China to the UK for bikes ordered to arrive to supply the next three or four months need. It needs a very good crystal ball to know exactly what you or anyone else might want to buy in seven months time. If sales were a million a year it wouldn't be a problem. The profit margins just don't permit the borrowings to sustain high stock levels, and lithium batteries deteriorate with age anyway so stocks have to be as fresh as possible.
but competing at that price level surely a Wisper or Ezee would win as they have far better bike components and performance..
The difference in components doesn't anywhere near account for the difference in price. A hundred pounds or so would match the Mistral or Salisbury to a £1300 plus bike. It's the law of diminishing returns. Look at the price difference between the Mondeo V6 and the Jaguar X type that Ford created. The latter is the same car, same engine, tarted up a bit, but it costs dear, the benefits being the image and the service from the Jaguar dealer.
I accept thats why I got a lower powered motor on the Salisbury compared to other models in the same price range - but the Powacycle does the job for the price -and I've heard (albeit historical now) good stories about service / support from them... Shame their new engineer doesn't contribute posts like Carl Percival used to, although they do still have their support department, i spoke to the new chap and he was helpful enough...
I'm glad they seem to have improved, they really did need to. Following the short period of Carl's good efforts they were a disaster, bitter threads in this forum with owners waiting many weeks for spares, and in a couple of cases a compete inability to find the cause of faults on bikes. They didn't appear to have a support department at all at that time, some dealers tearing their hair out in frustration.
do you think the situation will improve with time? I can see its a tough market, as in the space of just two years many e-bike dealers have actually gone out of business...
Sadly no, and I think we'll see more supplier failures. As you see from my replies, we need more sales volume, not a growth in the 15,000 but a multiple of the present level before it can improve appreciably and match other industries. Service will stay roughly as it is, most companies trying by various degrees to give a good service but with patchy results, some customers lucky with excellent service but others far from fortunate due to the intrinsic problems I've described.
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