Cycling

E-bikes are flying off the shelves across Europe. Here in the UK, not so much. In Germany, over 2 million e-bikes sold last year – that’s over half of all bikes sold there and four times the number of electric cars sold. Meanwhile, our own e-bike sales hover at a modest 150,000 units a year. So, what’s Germany doing right that Britain is getting so wrong?

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The urban car is about as well-suited to the modern metropolis as a hippopotamus to a studio flat. Summer streets sag under its weight, our air thickens with its exhalations of nitrogen oxides and soot, and all the while, the creature demands more - more space to move, more space to rest. The sheer spatial absurdity of it: Each steel-and-glass sarcophagus idling for hours, occupying far more square footage than the bodies it transports. And yet, bizarrely, we persist.

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The explosion of an e-bike battery at Rayners Lane station last month was undeniably alarming. Flames and toxic fumes disrupted services on the Piccadilly and Metropolitan lines, and the London Fire Brigade had to intervene. In response, the RMT and Aslef unions calling for a total ban on e-bikes on the London Underground, threatening industrial action if Transport for London (TfL) does not comply.

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We cyclists have a lot to contend with on UK roads. If it’s not potholes large enough to swallow a Brompton whole, it’s the delightful sheen of a diesel spill. And if it’s not motorists scrolling TikTok, it’s drivers mesmerised by their ever-expanding dashboard touchscreens - the latest must-have feature in the ongoing competition to see how little of the road head one can actually look at.

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Cyclists in England and Wales who use tracking devices to locate stolen bikes could soon see swifter police action, thanks to a new crime and policing bill that would allow officers to enter properties without a warrant when a tracker confirms a stolen item is inside.

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