Dutch owned, British bicycle makers Raleigh have announced it has moved into selling electric cargo bikes for the last mile delivery market.
“For Raleigh, e-cargo bikes have one of the biggest growth trajectories over the next four or five years,” said Edward Pegram, commercial partnerships manager at Raleigh UK, which launched its first e-cargo bikes in September. “Raleigh was a brand very much focused on leisure. It’s an every man brand, we’re not exclusive. But e-cargo bikes have opened us up to an opportunity to enter into the business market.”
The pandemic led to a boom in electric bike sales and e-cargo-bikes. Raleigh estimate that 2,000 electric cargo bikes were sold in the UK last year and this is set to double in 2021. National e-bike sales doubled to £280 million last year as compared to 2019.
“From our prediction, in the next three to four years, every second bike in the European core markets should be an e-bike,” Claus Fleischer, chief executive of e-bike component makers Bosch eBike Systems, said last month.
Though Raleigh has been cautious about moving into e-cargo-bikes, which cost as much as £5,000, major last mile grocery and hot food delivery players like Just Eat and Deliveroo are weighing up using them as a cheaper and more efficient alternative to diesel vans and cars. Another thing holding Raleigh back has been the fact that gig delivery workers rent or lease the machines while working with their clients, and a £5,000 price tag can be steep for those riders.