The numbers don’t lie: government purchasing assistance is stimulating the still emerging market for electric vehicles. And if Quebec is generous with car buyers, it may pay more for the state to include electric bikes in its assistance.
In any case, this is what Quebec bicycle manufacturers are advancing these days, including the Beauce brand Rocky Mountain. Raymond Dutil, chairman of the board of the company formerly known as Procycle, had planned to speak to Premier François Legault about it last week. Rocky Mountain had just announced the acquisition of BikeAction, its main distributor in Germany and the Benelux countries, for an unspecified sum, when this information was transmitted to the Duty.
The acquisition will allow Rocky Mountain to strengthen its presence in Europe, where relatively high-end mountain bikes like its own have a good reputation.
At the same time, the 150-employee company believes that the North American e-bike market could catch up with the European market if governments here emulate their counterparts across the Atlantic and include this active, energy-efficient means of transport in their cocktail of solutions to decarbonize the continental economy.
With electric assistance whose autonomy sometimes reaches a hundred kilometers per charge and a retail price ten times lower than that of the most affordable electric car currently on the market, an electric bike can be suitable in several environments: the city , the suburbs, the countryside… and the mountains, of course.
“The incentive to buy an electric bike would be super useful,” says the Duty Rocky Mountain CEO Katy Bond. It promotes cycling not only as a sporting activity, but also as a means of transportation. The electric bike is capable of covering a great distance. We feel the interest. It just lacks more formal support from the government. »
The leader of Rocky Mountain believes that François Legault would not be against this measure. Its Minister of Economy and Energy, Pierre Fitzgibbon, has also already said he is open to tax incentives for the purchase of an electric bicycle, especially if this measure encourages the production in Quebec of bicycles and propulsion technologies. electric.
Quebec production
Rocky Mountain is far from the only manufacturer who dreams of seeing governments in Canada or the United States make more room for bicycles in their mobility strategies. But it’s one of the few that have developed their own battery technology in-house and produce everything in their own factories.
“We develop our own engines, says Katy Bond. We had to form a team to do all of this here, a team separate from those who develop our frames and other components. Our expertise covers all cells, connectors, software. It was an apprenticeship that has been going on for more than 10 years. »
Given the origins of what is now its only brand, the Beauceron manufacturer does not plan to specialize in urban mobility. Created in British Columbia at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, Rocky Mountain is inseparable from the mountains and the outdoors. It was certainly the most active of the brands owned until five years ago by Procycle, which grouped everything under one name to simplify its catalog.
All that is needed is more formal support from the government
Rocky Mountain still indicates that two out of three bikes it sells in Europe at present are equipped with electric assistance. This proportion is growing by 5% to 10% each year and should continue to do so in the coming years.
The electric shift is more timid in Canada and the United States, where a third of Rocky Mountain’s sales are electrified. This is a proportion that is roughly the image of the more general bicycle market, all brands combined.
From the Rockies to Frankfurt
It’s not their electric technology that sets Rocky Mountain bikes in Germany apart. It is the maple leaf that they sport on their frame. The Germans have a special affection for the Canadian Rockies, perceived there as the pinnacle of the outdoors.
The Beauce-based company’s acquisition of the BikeAction distributor, whose head office is in Frankfurt, will enable it to take better advantage of this favorable a priori with regard to Canadian frames in the country of Goethe and its neighbours. Its turnover has just surpassed the symbolic threshold of 100 million dollars, with annual worldwide sales of approximately 50,000 bicycles.
The objective is to extend a growth strongly stimulated in the last two years by a pandemic which made more than one consumer rediscover the virtues of the bicycle.
Rocky Mountain management is especially hoping for a return to predictability, especially on the supply side, but also on the order side. Buying a bike a year or two in advance due to a shortage of stocks “gave a lot of people headaches during the pandemic,” says Katy Bond. “Now we hope to return to shorter, more normal times. »
Unless the Legault government reserves a little tax surprise for the electric bike market…