EbikeIndia Co    

There is alot about ebikes

Ebikes in India

The ebikes have been introduced in the Indian market in the last 3-4 years in any significant ways inspite of other countries using them for more than 10 or more years. And now  alot of work is being done in Germany and Italy to improve the ebikes.  India is making beginnings with ebikes whether two wheelers or threewheelers. And the market potential is unimagineable.

And to tell you more, the ebikes, actually a bicycle fitted with DC motor and battery,  were developed  around the time of the first world war in the 1920's but were soon forgotten with discovery of gushing oil from the oil wells at very cheap rates and big cars.The Americans loved their big cars and travelling became so easy and convenient. Only in the 1980's when the oil prices shot up very high did the idea come back and was further developed and since then has caught the fascination of many people around the globe for cheap and clean and non polluting commuting for short distances within a campus, or small towns or cities for short distances.

Coming back to about ebikes in India in the last 4 years about 100 companies have introduced them in all the possibilities that exist around the globe, even some foreign companies entered the market seeing the size of the market potential a wopping 1200 billion people. But inspite of all the initial enthusiasm but the lack of awareness, poor quality of the imported goods, the old habbits of the people and road conditions the ebikes were not widely accepted by the people. Most companies lost their monies. Having learnt the hard lessions many companies are making a come back with improved ebikes which have been indigenised in many ways and made suitable for Indian road conditions. Ofcourse it will be most important to mention here that the battery and its life was the biggest failures keeping the ebikes from becoming popular. Ebike batteries are different and usage is different and need to be maintained properly but the notion of majority of the people that they can fit and forget about the batteries is not entirely true for ebike batteries. You cannot fit and forget about these batteries otherwsie they will not last over their useful life. Even the people expected that the ebike batteries will last over 2-3 years like in their cars or scooters belied their hopes and they blamed the ebikes as useless. Ofcourse they had used them and misused them too but not put a value to its usage and calculated its running cost. Simply because the people are used to the most popular brand of the old style lambretta scooter which lasted atleast three generations being prized possessions of the family and no intial investment was counted as any costs or even the maintenance costs was considered nominal. Another big plus with the old style lambretta (honda now)  is that the resale value could easily be ascertained from any road mechanic thus giving the notion that old was gold.

India is at the threshold of change and many things are making it possible for ebikes to make a come back and people are looking forward to buy ebikes, the reasons are the increasing oil prices, subsidy being given by the state governments, and more awareness about ebikes. Even though pollution and climate change aspects  take a second place in the buying decision about ebike but nonetheless. Even aspects about batterry and its life arte better understood and people will accept to change them in 6 to 12 months depending upon their use. Ofcourse it is well understood that battery cost is just about 7-10 paise a kilometre as compared to when running on petrol at Rupee 1.5 per kilometre. At such difference in cost of running the initial costs are recovered very soon and one can move on to new ebikes in 1-2 years as it the trend in oter countries rather than hold on to the same two wheeler for generations.And really lambretta also has a life and thereafter becomes a petrol guzzling and polluting machine only that it has a resale value which the ebikes do not have yet as the market is still  growing.

As soon as ebikes are available on a subsidy across India and the price is well within the market expectations of the people, the ebikes will capture a very big segment of the two wheeler market in India which is one of the biggest in the world by its sheer size of the population.