European Cargo Bike Sales Growing at Over 50% Per Year

Results of a comprehensive European Union funded survey into the cargo bike industry’s sales suggest that sales across Europe are likely to increase by just over 50% this year.

The ‘CityChangerCargoBike’ project undertook the inaugural study of 38 brands operating in the sector who provided anonymised data.

Here is a summary of European cargo bike sales in units:

Year	Sales	Year on Year Growth
2018	17,800
2019	28,500	60%
2020 (projected)	43,600	52%

Further indicative of the interest in the segment, seven of the 38 participants are so new to the market that they weren’t able to supply 2018 sales data to reference. Back in 2018 none of the brands sold over 5,000 cargo bikes annually, but this year three expect to exceed that level.

Interestingly, commercial sales are growing almost in parallel to private sales, with market share currently almost equal. In 2020 the projected split will be 51.3% commercial sales vs 48.7% private sales. Commercial sales include freight companies such as DHL and others who are using cargo bikes for ‘first mile / last mile’ parcel deliveries.

In 2019 75% of cargo bikes included electric power assist and that proportion has been trending upwards.

The proportion of cargo bikes with three wheels has been gradually rising from 45% to 51% with the balance having two wheels.

Germany is the largest European market, followed in order by Denmark, the UK, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy and Spain.

Although the numbers of cargo bikes sold are still tiny compared to all other forms of bicycles, their very high average unit price means that the sector is now becoming commercially significant.

Unfortunately the survey did not collect retail sale price data, but making an assumption of A$6,000 per cargo bike would give the 2020 European retail cargo bike market a value of A$261 million.

Most of this article was first published in Cycling Industry News (UK). Other data came from the official survey results.