“It allows me to use it every day”

In the Parisian workshop of the start-up Virvolt, on Wednesday October 19, electrification kits are mounted on mechanical bikes throughout the day. Here, it takes between 600 and 1,200 euros to modernize your bike. Steeve, 43, works in finance. He took the plunge a month ago, and he doesn’t regret his investment at all. “I have a job where I still have to move around quite a bit, he explains, and arriving on a date a little sweaty or not in great shape, it was not ideal. Switching it to electric allows me to use it every day. “

New, electric bikes cost on average between 500 euros and up to more than 3,000 euros for high-end models. In 2020, more than 500,000 electric bikes were sold in France, a record. Users are more and more seduced, but some remain cautious especially because of the price.

Fanny, 25, travels more than three kilometers every morning to go to work and every evening to return. She electrified her bike over a year ago. “After confinement, I didn’t want to take public transport at all, she indicates.

“I already had a bike that I really like. I didn’t feel like telling myself ‘I’m buying another bike’, when I have one that works and in fact I’m just a fat one. lazy. “

Fanny, 25, who installed an engine on her mechanical bicycle

to franceinfo

“Today consumers are more and more sensitive to their consumption choices, comments Jérôme-Aristide Gaymard, the founder of Virvolt, They’re fed up with brands that make obsolescence, sell hardware for a fortune but are doomed to be scrapped. ” For him, it is ultimately quite logical to return to cycling. “The bicycle was invented to go from point A to point B, he recalls. With the emergence of the car, it has become a leisure activity and a means of playing sports, and there the bicycle returns to its primary function, namely a means of locomotion. “

Getting back to cycling was precisely the choice of 30-year-old Lenny. He used to go to work on a thermal scooter. “At one point I wondered if I was not going to replace it with an electric scooter, explains the 30-something, but for the moment I made the choice of the bicycle, for the sportier side and to be in the open air. “

Steeve, Fanny and Lenny are not the only ones to have gone electric. The market continues to grow. In 2020, the start-up Virvolt electrified 500 bicycles: a figure that has already almost doubled in 2021.