Market report of the global bicycle industry

Breaking the convention of the past year, CyclingIndustry.News took off in September and visited the Eurobike exhibition and IAA Mobility, which is the premier exhibition in the automotive industry and is now attracting the bicycle industry. Here, we summarize the trends that may lead the future development of the bicycle industry...

Friedrichshafen finally withdrew from the metropolis with some nostalgic sadness. Most people in the industry said that Friedrichshafen, as a place, will accompany them throughout their lives. As a venue, the situation is very different. After moving to Frankfurt, people are generally relieved. For most people, not only travel arrangements will become easier, but the venue also provides new opportunities.

Just before the start of the exhibition, director Stefan Reisinger said to CI.N: “We will work closely with the organizer to transform the concept of the exhibition, and then export creativity to further places. The upper limit that exhibitors can achieve is now higher. We The space is four times that of Friedrichshafen. We have also gained more consumer influence in big cities, and many exhibitors particularly want this kind of interaction."

Finally, the organizers were pleasantly surprised by the number of attendees this year, although it is generally believed that in this transitional and Covid complex year, the numbers will undoubtedly be far lower than the normal side-by-side experience.

630 exhibitors were set up on the widened island, and the hall was full from the front, but only half of the time most of the time. Obviously, the Zeppelin hall needs some filling, which has a double benefit, which is to provide breathing space for the masked visitors. Eventually the organizer reported that 18,770 professional visitors attended the exhibition, while 13,424 consumers came to the two festival days.

On the last day of the performance, an airship took off from the venue opposite the exhibition hall and hovered over Lake Constance in the next few hours to advertise Eurobike's new rival in Munich. These pages will be detailed later.

In 2022, the 30th Eurobike will be held in Frankfurt from July 13th to 17th.

It's all about bicycles. When asked about the competition in Munich, Reisinger made a promise to the industry that Eurobike, no matter when and where, will always have nothing to do with cars.

This was well demonstrated in the final products on the main stage, including speeches with some industry thought leaders. Anna Cavazzini attended and spoke, and the Austrian European Parliament members’ comments on European sustainable development policies Develop an opinion. For more information about the movie, please see page 28 of this edition.

In addition to the conference schedule provided in terms of products, Eurobike has also created a packed Start Ups area, which seems to have been busy, hosting the Eurobike Awards, and a dedicated hall to showcase innovators of electric bikes and cargo bikes.

So, what did you miss?

Drive system innovation purists, don't read it, this is all about electric bicycles, so the A1 exhibition hall has the most keen perspective on new things in technology and innovation.

The German company Schaeffler has added a few inches of columns to its new chain and belt drive. Free Drive was developed in cooperation with Heinzmann and has a small generator installed in the bottom bracket of the bicycle. The movement of the crank rotation provides power for this and converts the energy from the effort of the rider into electrical energy. All of this is managed by CAN communication technology that connects motors, generators, batteries and control devices. The best point? If you ride at a higher pace than needed to power the system, the excess energy generated will be used in the battery. The same is true for regenerative braking.

This eliminates the need for any physical connection to the rear wheel. It is simple, you only need to rely on the power collected by the drive to roll, and the drive provides power for the 250W rear hub motor. In terms of design, this obviously raises new questions, such as how to deal with the space saved around the chainstay and rear hub-this is a very good question for bicycle designers.

Closer to home, but still in the prototype stage is the Intra-Drive designed and built in Edinburgh. The start-up company created a mid-drive, eight-speed gearbox and electric motor system. The system is durable and has extremely low maintenance costs.

The key to the unique selling point is its heavy-duty high load capacity and sealing structure. This means that there are no cables and no exposed gears on the bicycle; more importantly, the gearbox provides 427% of the transmission range, with sequential shifts within the housing.

At the same time, the motor can provide 100 Nm of torque to the rear wheels. The company's control algorithm continuously monitors torque, cadence and wheel speed, as well as motor temperature. All of these constitute a managed shifting experience that optimizes shifting, and most importantly, it is expected to be able to shift automatically in future updates.

Is this the beginning of coming together? Rumors circulating before the IAA may come together in the literal form of bicycle companies and car companies, and the show may provide a platform for paperwork. At the time of writing, we have not seen any evidence of the results of such things, but it is safe to say that in the first two days of CI.N, scouts from the bicycle industry were present.

The lines of the booth itself are becoming more and more blurred, especially in the space of freight and logistics vehicles. It is often said that when car brands try to make bicycle products, they have insufficient basic knowledge, over-enter the field of futurism, and misunderstand the basic knowledge of riding control in the process. For cargo bikes, this can be said to be less problematic than high-performance e-MTB. We dare to say, it seems that the automotive world is really starting to master the product now.

Dr. Stefan Cuber, the managing director of Micromobility at Mubea, presented two concepts in the field of cargo bikes and electric scooters at IAA, showing how the R&D budget of a $2.5 billion company can deliver well-thought-out results very quickly. Mubea's Urban_M cargo bike, valued at 10,000 euros, has won awards, although its skeleton is different from the typical efforts of the bicycle industry to date. The company's catalog has described the use of Hermes and DPD, and the smiling face of the delivery truck is exposed from the panoramic windshield. The best proof that this originated in the automotive world is the car-like front bumper, visible girder-like framework and over-built wheels.

The chassis is made of fiberglass, which combines strength and low weight. The element straddles the steel central column, on both sides are double wishbone suspensions with shock-absorbing struts and stabilizer bars. The wheels are specially manufactured and can carry standard motorcycle tires.

When it comes to payload, the owner can stack 335 kg, but the total allowed weight is 450 kg. In an ingenious design, the box volume is designed to be loaded by a forklift, perfectly accepting the standard palette size. It is an electric bicycle powered by a BMZ engine and Rohloff SpeedHub 500/14. The battery capacity provided by two detachable units near the steering column is 814Wh.

Cuber told CI.N: ​​"Micromobility is the strategic pillar of Mubea. Our cargo concept design can be driven almost like a mini car; it is strong, flexible and adaptable, and can travel 100 kilometers. The next development is that we think we will A development that resonates well with large fleet operators, this is to propose a battery option made of iron phosphate. This is an interesting proposal because from an insurance point of view, it eliminates any flammable factors that cannot be surpassed by traditional batteries . Legally speaking, of course this is a cargo bike, so it is suitable for bicycle lanes to help riders avoid traffic."

During the Intermediate Manufacturing Meeting, when browsing the lobby of the IAA Automotive Department, it quickly became clear that many multi-billion-dollar companies in the room recognized "peak cars." It can be said that their product range is diverse, which may not exist even a few years ago.

For this reason, the parts suppliers in the room also displayed their products, hoping to attract the attention of the automobile industry and the bicycle industry, which is actually an emerging space in between.

Jens Gráfe of the Hirschvogel Automotive Group told CI.N at the booth representing the sub-brand Aximo that their exhibition space was built to show the bicycle industry that parts can be manufactured in accordance with more powerful automotive standards, and it may be easier to provide the world of automobiles. The price point obtained. Jens pointed to a forged four-spoke wheeled cargo bike on the Aximo booth and said: “For cargo bikes, to reach the point where we can challenge transportation standards in terms of weight, it is wise to use parts inspired by the need for more powerful products. The automotive industry. It can be said that without this, the bicycle industry will not have a breakthrough in the field of micro-mobility, and we will be the promoters and provide parts with brands. We have customers in both fields."

AXIMO was created specifically to meet the micro-mobility market, combining the expertise and services of various ecosystem partners to form a component platform for three-wheel or four-wheel micro-mobility. The platform includes forged and machined components, operating displays and software applications, and is a modular system.

“These modules can be used on the client side to implement different concepts for micro-vehicles in a cost-effective manner,” we were told.

Cars are getting smaller and smaller (mainly). An inevitable trend leading to the Velodrome is the size of some of the car concepts on display. As we mentioned in an interview with Bosch CEO Claus Fleischer, there is a mathematical element at play in the changing trends of urban traffic. If the city is not getting bigger, but the population is getting bigger, then theoretically speaking, considering the above borders, the scale of major transportation vehicles will not be out of proportion.

As put forward by the Public Policy Research Institute in June this year, according to the current trajectory, by 2050, we can predict that by 2050 there will be an increase of 10 million cars on the road, and there will be countless cars parked; after all, on average, In other words, their parking time is 23 hours a day. In other words, in mathematical terms, a headache and no amount of electric car sales can be solved, unless of course they are much smaller.

One example that caught people's attention at IAA is Microlino's 3-wheel, two-person electric car. Obviously, the regulatory provisions have been approved, and production will begin to fulfill more than 24,000 forward orders. It is a vehicle that can recognize urban traffic restrictions and aims to use space for battle. First, it has a top speed of 56 mph, which is more than enough for any city. Buying a new car at a price of 12,500 Euros is also quite affordable.

You may ask, why do we talk about cars in bicycle magazines? Well, there is a sign that the automotive industry has realized that before mathematics can overwhelm an industry that likes larger vehicles, it needs to start competition in a reasonable way to get a piece of urban traffic. It has 230 liters of storage space, can transport goods reasonably, and because of its size makes parking easier, it can be said that it can pull almost the comfort of cargo bike buyers.

Auto Professionalism Weekly compares and contrasts the footnotes of trade shows; there are significant differences in the ways of exhibiting in different industries.

Although strictly speaking, our own editor's assessment of the bicycle industry is purely anecdotal, the trade show approach is completely different. The experience of the Auto Expo is forensic, because when visiting the booth, the staff will meet and greet visitors within a few seconds. The next step is to register, exchange cards and necessary materials, and then provide a seat or learn more about the displayed product. No stones were missed, and in any situation we experienced, we did not leave the booth without all the information we needed.

Again, this is a generalization, but the booth experience of the bicycle industry lacks such expertise in as many as half of the visits. The staff often talk to each other, allowing passing tourists to browse freely.

Just as the retail experience is perfected to build customer satisfaction and loyalty, the trade show experience-in order to recoup the generally high cost-must be equally precisely designed to benefit both parties.

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