Good year for Austrian e-MTB sales

A recent release in figures shows that e-MTBs had a fantastic 2015 in Austria with the future looking even stronger for the European country. Over 77,000 units were sold last year which was an increase of over 50% which means that nearly one-fifth of all bicycles sales in Austria are now e-MTBs. Unfortunately, this booster year for e-MTBs couldn't improve the performance of the bicycle market as a whole which fell by nearly 3% compared to twelve months previously.

When it comes to e-bikes, they are now the second most popular choice in Austria for the first time since they burst onto the scene. Mountain bikes remain as the biggest choice with over one-third of the market share but e-bikes are now mounting a strong challenge, the average price per unit is steadily increasing. Average price in the market now stands just shy of €800 with IBD’s boasting a figure of around €1,050 and sports retailers at around half this amount.

It is important to note that some sporting goods retailers in Austria use a combined figure for bicycles and winter sports sales in summer so the figure may be slightly distorted. There are also a number of ‘price-aggressive’ operators in the market, like Intersport-Austria, who manage to sell private bicycles for very small prices.

Austria currently has only two manufacturers in the country; KTM Fahrrad and Simplon Fahrrad who produce 160,000 and 12,000 units per year respectively. Simplon Fahrrad are a custom-manufacturer so cater to a niche market whereas KTM are very much on a larger scale. It is believed that around 40% of KTM’s production was sold at home with the rest going abroad with Simplon reporting around ten percent less. As a result, this means that the amount of bicycles imported remains high at over 300,000 per year.

A representative from the VSSO has said “Consumers rely on the technical know-how of the IBDs due to the ongoing technical development of bicycles and e-bikes. The IBDs have the expertise to service the e-bikes thanks to the training offered by the e-bike system suppliers. E-bikes did not only arrive in the mid of the Austrian society but reached a much wider and versatile area of usage. The most rapidly expanding category of e-bikes are the e-mountain bikes.”

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