Talking Headways Podcast: Second-Hand E-Bikes Can Be The Way Forward

This week, we’re joined by Calvin Thigpen of Toole Design and Ysabel Hoogeveen of Upway to discuss the report, Refurbished E-bikes: An Affordable Transportation Solution for Cities and Consumers. We chat about costs and value for used e-bikes and what could help grow the industry — too bad we spoke before Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was recently spotted tooling around on an Upway e-bike.

Now, you know at Talking Headways, we give you three ways to enjoy our content: Click the player below and listen, click this link and read the full transcript or check out the excerpt below the player:

Jeff Wood: I’m curious about who needs refurbished e-bikes versus who can actually afford them. There’s a price level that you can get e-bikes versus a regular bike, and so there’s obviously folks who have multiple e-bikes or they can afford to have an e-bike. The people in my neighborhood are usually putting their kids in the box and, and then riding down the street.

Ysabel Hoogeveen: I don’t know 100 percent the answer on that, but I think one good sign lately what we see in the market is that a lot of rebate programs starting to increase in certain states.

If you think, for example, like the California rebate, Minnesota rebate, there are a lot of states that are starting to invest them. I think the bigger question is that in general we should expand eligibility of people that can actually own an e-bike. And that’s where potentially refurbished e-bike could be an option to get more kind of adoption per dollar spent.

Like a rebate voucher can go up to $1,500 per e-bike off. And especially, a hot topic right now with also the raising gas prices is that hopefully we hope to see a trend that people are getting away from car ownership and moving to an e-bike ownership.

The annual cost of owning a car is over $15,000, whereas an e-bike costs you just a bit more than $1,000 per year. So I think when it comes to need versus own, I think different subsidies at a state level will help us allow to reach also people that really need it when it comes to delivery workers, maybe the low-income families, like these are types of tactics that we should implement to increase e-bike adoption.

Calvin Thigpen: To your point, Jeff, a wealthier family has the purchasing power to buy a $5,000 e-bike, so I think, rightly so, a lot of the e-bike rebate programs have really shifted their focus to put some or all of their money towards just income-qualified recipients to make sure those people can afford a high quality e-bike.

And I think one thing that maybe is missing is the people who are just above that threshold. And I think that’s potentially where services like Upway can come in is if Upway offers you know. 30-, 40-, 50-, 60-percent or more discounts, you know that that makes it much more reasonable for you to buy a bike that’s actually going to last you a long time.

It’s going to serve all of your needs, be it school commute, groceries, et cetera. And so I do think there is a little bit with evolution of the e-bike rebate programs, I think there’s a little bit of a sort of a missing middle that I think Upway and other similar services and sort of affordability efforts can help plug that hole a bit.