EU Parliament decides on no mandatory insurance and plate for e-bikes
Posted on in Business News , Cycles News
e European Parliament and Council have reached a provisional agreement to exclude e-bikes from insurance obligations. It is part of complete set of rules to better protect road accident victims.
This provisional agreement runs completely separate from the recommendations of the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) which were published last March. They carried out the study on behalf of the European Commission on the safety of Personal Mobility Devices. The TRL then advised to keep e-bikes outside the scope of the next EU Type Approval legislation. Currently this EU Type Approval is applicable on speed-pedelecs and come with, among them, a license plate and insurance.
No over-regulation
"This is good news from the European Parliament for the bicycle industry," said CONEBI chairman Erhard Buchel responding on the announcement.
EU Parliament rapporteur Dita Charanzova said: "It was high time to clarify motor insurance rules, so that Europeans are better protected and treated equally in the EU when accidents occur and when insuring their vehicles. With this political agreement we have additionally managed to curb absurd over-regulation for e-bikes and some other categories like motorsports."
Following steps
The deal will now have to be formally approved by Parliament and Council. Once approved, the directive will enter into force 20 days after its publication in the EU Official Journal. The new rules will start to apply 24 months after the entry into force.
Mandatory insurance or not?
The question whether or not to implement a Europe wide mandatory e-bike insurance has been discussed more often in recent history. In January 2020 the EU Parliament voted against a European Commission's proposal to include e-bikes EU Motor Insurance Directive after a strong lobby of industry stakeholders and the ECF.
UK e-bike sales value hits 23% of total
A new Mintel report conducted alongside 2,000 UK consumers suggests that electric bike sales rose to represent nearly a quarter of cycle sales value in 2020, while the number of people expected to buy a bike or e-bike in the next 12 months remains on the rise.
The subject of whether demand will sustain as the world works its way through the pandemic is on all in the industry's mind at present and the Mintel research has the figure at 42% of people who intend to make the investment in the coming year, versus 37% who said the same in 2020.
The findings in the report do run at odds in parts with industry research on valuations, which are based on e-commerce sales data rather than consumer surveys. Nonetheless, Mintel writes that it believes the value of the UK bicycle market rose by around 44% to reach nearly £1.2 billion in 2020, up from £825 million in 2019. Meanwhile, the Bicycle Association‘s data concludes that £1 billion was added in 2020, taking the total value to £2.31 billion. It added that bicycle sales alone surpassed £1 billion for the first time in recent datasets.