2023-08-13 08:00:09
August 12, 2023 Today at 5:30 AM
Updated at 12 August 2023 13:51
With increasingly intensive use of electric bicycles, their maintenance and repair costs are rising as stores gear up to make this activity profitable.
“The electric bike will be your new car.” This well-felt adage turns out to be even more true in use than you had imagined.
When you start using an electric bike on a daily basis, you don’t always realize it right away, but as you drive, another reality jumps out at you. This saying also applies to maintenance and repair costs Who accumulate fast enough for heavy e-bike users.
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Of course, these costs are disproportionate to those of a car, but they are also much greater than those of a mechanical bicycle.
“We warn customers that it is necessary to plan for at least 400 euros in costs per year”, slips us a seller of high-end electric bicycles.
An e-bike maintenance takes longer and therefore costs more money. To this are added quite frequent small repairs for intensive users.
Brake pads or wiring, derailleur, fork, inner tube, levers/shifters or any other loose part, the hiccups remain numerous throughout the life of the bike. And when it is electric, repairs are often more complicated, and therefore more expensive.
Obviously, a softer use of your mount with medium pedaling assistance and frequent cleaning can lower maintenance costs, but when it comes to your everyday mobility tool in a very active life, it remains quite theoretical.
Complicated profitability
The electric bicycle boom is therefore accompanied by a boom in bicycle repair business. It’s a challenge for everyone. For the customer who had not anticipated such costs, for the leasing companies which have the greatest difficulty in offering maintenance solutions which can suit everyone.
It is paradoxically also a big challenge for the bikers themselves who have to manage to make this workshop activity profitable.
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The Lucien store in Evere, for example, charges 150 euros for the maintenance of the electric bike. “People are shocked by these kinds of amounts, but we can easily spend two hours on a bike,” says Karl Lechat, Lucien’s boss.
The idea is that it is better to have a good maintenance at 150 euros than one done too quickly at 99 euros.
At Lucian’s rue du Mail, we decided to take the bull by the horns and completely separate the bicycle repair activity from that of the final assembly of the bicycles.
In repair, “we have put 10 workstations to work as efficiently as possible”, explains Karl Lechat. The former boss of Skoda Belgium is well aware of the logic of chain repairs and the need for efficiency in the processes.
In the repair part, all the parts are available. No bike assembly takes place here, no hodgepodge between parts, cardboard boxes of new bikes are not in the way. “The idea is to be as efficient as possible. There are no customers at your feet or salespeople bothering you.”
In addition to maintenance and repairs, this is also where the accessories are installed. Because on the editing side, everything is done so that the work is done as much as possible on the assembly line without customization.
It is also a question of making the workshop activity profitable, because as Lechat explains, many bike shops don’t even know if their workshop is profitable or not, but only if their shop is profitable or not.
“We did an analysis of the largest workshops. We saw that most workshops were not generating profitability,” he reveals. The difference would often come from setting higher prices combined with quality services.
Cyclo to the rescue
Faced with high costs and increasingly frequent use of electric bikes in town, the non-profit association Cyclo decided to tackle the problem. Its Central Station bike point in Brussels now also repairs electric bikesalways with the same promise: to repair bicycles at the lowest possible price.
“Today we arrive at a rate between 90 and 95% of repair of electric bicycles.”
Jamal Khatib
Central station bike point manager, Cyclo
“It started as a pilot project, but today we do everything. We arrive at a rate between 90 and 95% of electric bikes that we know how to repair”, explains Jamal Khatib, manager of the central station bike point.
“There are bicycle dealers who sell bicycles, but who do not have the following service”, he testifies. The demand at Cyclo is very strong.
Today, the central point knows how to take care of Bosch systems, but also Shimano, the two most widespread systems currently in quality bicycles. “When the bikes come from China, we don’t always have all the parts, but we still try to fix them,” says Khatib.
Motors and batteries with a limited lifespan
Opting for an electric bike is better for the planet than riding in a car. No one will tell you otherwise. With this in mind, e-bike buyers therefore hope that their bikes are repairable as much as possible and for as long as possible.
An electric bike brings new components that are more polluting to produce and less durable that bike dealers can’t work on. Everyone thinks of the battery and its number of recharge cycles over a lifetime.
But the surprise is greater when a cyclist learns that motors also have a very limited lifespan. “Bosch tells us that the motors last 20,000 km, but it’s more like 15,000 in general”, slips a bicycle dealer. “It’s not so bad, but the problem is that people compare lifespans car engines,” he adds. Some customers have engines at 30,000 km, says another.
When the motor or the battery shows an internal problem, the repairer is obliged to turn to the supplier. “The motherboard is top secret!” Smiles Jamal Khatib from Cyclo. There are a lot of young companies reconditioning motors or batteries, but they are only just starting out.
In our particular case, the engine failed under 13,000 km and Bosch refused to send the engine to even make a diagnosis. New engine cost? 772 euros, without labor (112 euros). Or the price of an entry-level electric bike in the supermarket.
Contacted, Bosch details a complete engine repair program and denies that its products have a limited lifespan.
In fact, the response from the repairer to the bicycle dealer in an email that we were able to read might not be clearer. “The engine having been produced 6 years ago now […] we invite you to contact MBPS (Magura Bosch Parts & Services Editor’s note) to obtain a complete motor replacement quote”, can we read there.
The summary
Riding an electric bike generates higher maintenance and repair costs than anticipated by many cyclists. A big business which paradoxically remains difficult for bicycle dealers to make profitable. Retail groups like Lucien are trying to make workshops more efficient .Faced with these high costs, the non-profit organization Cyclo is also embarking on the battle to make maintenance and repair accessible.
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