The incredible, Earth-saving electric bike is having a moment

The clean-transportation revolution won't arrive by way of futuristic hyperloops, driverless taxi pods, or drones the size of minivans — not anytime soon, at least.

And while electric cars get all the hype, a game-changing solution to getting around without warming the planet has flourished right under our noses. 

Electric bicycles of all shapes and sizes have whirred and zipped their way into the mainstream in recent years as the pandemic has supercharged an e-biking boom that was already well underway. And that's a great thing, because while replacing gas-burning cars with electric ones is key to heading off global warming, research has found Americans also need to drive less altogether to avoid climate catastrophe.

The Earth-saving potential of e-bikes

Transportation is the single biggest contributor to US greenhouse-gas emissions. And light-duty vehicles (cars, pickup trucks, and SUVs, not semis and airplanes) make up the largest chunk of that. Gains in vehicle efficiency are being dragged down by rising sales of large SUVs and trucks, while practically no progress has been made in reducing the number of miles people drive, Carter Rubin, a transportation lead at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Insider. 

All that makes enticing people to step out of the driver's seat and onto a bike, bus, or sidewalk increasingly important for meeting climate goals.

"Cleaner cars are an important solution, but we can't just focus on cars," Katherine García, the director of the Clean Transportation for All Campaign at the Sierra Club, told Insider. "We need to make sure we are putting programs in place that really encourage people to take alternatives."

E-bikes have loads of potential to pry Americans away from their beloved automobiles, advocates told Insider, especially since short trips could easily be made on two wheels instead. According to the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, more than half of all trips in the US are under 3 miles.

A University of Oxford study found that swapping a car for a bike just once a day slashed an individual's transportation emissions by a whopping 67%. Another study found choosing an e-bike for 15% of one's miles traveled cut their transportation emissions by 12%.

Fast, fun, and convenient, e-bikes are already helping people make that kind of shift in their daily lives. 

Victor Silva, a product manager in the suburbs of Washington, DC, bought a RadRunner Plus from Rad Power Bikes for $1,900 in the summer after realizing most of his car trips were only a few miles. Now he's hooked. He recently bought another e-bike and is looking to sell his and his wife's second car since it barely gets any use. He said he wasn't going to miss the insurance payments or traffic jams.  

"I'm trading an activity that I absolutely hate doing, which is getting stuck in traffic, with something that I actually like doing, which is getting some exercise and riding my bike," he told Insider. 

After Wesley Cook and his wife sold their second car last year, they test-rode a pair of e-bikes from a local, Atlanta-based company called Edison Bicycles and never looked back. While they had never biked much before, they've slowly replaced daily errands like getting groceries or taking their son to school with e-bike rides.

Cook, a software engineer, just made an addition to the couple's fleet — a cargo bike from Urban Arrow that has plenty of room for their son and their baby who's arriving later this year.

The e-bike advantage

The power of e-bikes to alter peoples' habits and help save the planet is simple and maybe a little obvious. But it's important and worth spelling out nonetheless: By making biking easier, e-bikes encourage people to ride more. 

A little electrical assistance goes a long way toward helping people overcome the obstacles keeping them from biking, whether that's steep hills, a lengthy commute, physical limitations, or the mortifying thought of showing up somewhere with pit stains, John MacArthur, a professor at Portland State University who researches sustainable transportation, told Insider.

"A lot of those barriers can be broken down by putting a motor on a bike," he said.

National surveys he's conducted have indicated that e-bikes motivate people to ride farther and more often — plus they broaden interest in cycling beyond the stereotypical spandex-clad white man.

Lyft, which operates bike-sharing systems across the US, has noticed similar trends. It's seen ridership boom by more than 50% since 2020 and attributes much of that growth to e-bikes. In 2021, e-bikes made up just 20% of Lyft's New York City fleet but 40% of total rides and nearly two-thirds of journeys between boroughs, which typically involve a steep climb over a bridge. 

As many people who have ridden an e-bike will tell you, they're just plain fun — and they can often get you places faster and with less hassle than a car or bus. They're that rare thing in life that's both good and good for you.

"They're kind of a rocket fuel for regular biking," Rubin, a daily e-biker, told Insider. 

Electric cars are important, too, but they're expensive and far off for a lot of drivers, MacArthur said. Just consider someone who recently bought a gas car and doesn't plan on trading it in for a decade. E-bikes, on the other hand, are an option that's right here, right now. 

The most popular electric vehicles in the US don't have a Tesla logo

While electric cars get all the attention, e-bikes have for years been the best-selling electric vehicles in the US.

Last year, Americans bought just over 800,000 electric cars, according to Kelley Blue Book, a record. E-bike imports (a good proxy for sales since most e-bikes aren't made in the US) numbered around 1.1 million, surging from 880,000 in 2021 and 437,000 the year before, according to an e-bike-industry trade group. 

In dollar terms, e-bike retail sales nearly quadrupled in the past four years, rising from $240.1 million in 2019 to $885.5 million in 2022, the market-research firm Circana estimates. While sales of leg-powered bicycles slumped 16% last year, e-bike sales jumped by $100 million.

Ed Benjamin, the Light Electric Vehicle Association's chair, chalks up the trend to growing awareness among consumers and more interest and know-how among bike sellers. The pandemic, which made people wary of close-quarters public transit, boosted e-bike fandom to new heights, he said. And sales show no sign of slowing down. In China and some parts of Europe, one out of every two bikes sold has a motor, Benjamin said, which indicates there's plenty of room for growth in the US. 

Improving tech and new form factors for different types of shoppers have fueled public appetite, too, MacArthur of Portland State said. Now buyers can choose from a wide variety of regular-looking bikes, folding bikes, tricycles, fat-tire mopeds, and even cargo bikes, which have extra room for groceries and seats for children.

The demand explosion has meant boom times for e-bike makers who played their cards right, like California's Aventon, which got its start in 2013 selling (nonelectric) fixed-gear bikes.

Seeing the potential in e-bikes, the young firm went all in on the technology in 2020, at what turned out to be a very opportune time. Since then, it's expanded its lineup to seven models and multiplied its revenues by a factor of 42, Aventon's chief marketing officer, Adele Nasr, told Insider. One key driver of the success, Nasr said: Customers are increasingly seeing e-bikes as legitimate tools for replacing car trips, rather than just toys for recreation.

"They're starting to think about them differently, starting to imagine use cases that are so much more evolved than they were even three years ago, which is incredible," Nasr said. 

Congress could give the e-bike boom another jolt

While the federal government has committed billions of dollars to public EV charging and $7,500 tax refunds to buyers of Teslas and electric Ford F-150s, it's largely left e-bikes out in the cold.

That's a big mistake, said Noa Banayan, the director of federal affairs at PeopleForBikes, an advocacy group that represents the bike industry. Since e-bikes are much cheaper than electric cars, "you can get them into the hands of consumers faster," she said.

But times are changing. In March, a group of congresspeople reintroduced the Electric Bicycle Incentive Kickstart for the Environment (E-BIKE) Act, which proposes a 30% discount (up to $1,500) for the purchase of a new e-bike. The law could not only make e-bikes more accessible to more Americans, Rubin of the Natural Resources Defense Council said, but also send a powerful message to state and local governments to get serious about safer cycling infrastructure such as protected bike lanes.

Unlike when it was first introduced (then scrapped) in 2021, the bill now has support from major environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and Environment America.

"Now they're realizing that electric bicycles and active transportation, and micromobility more broadly, should be a part of their larger transportation and climate agendas," Banayan said. "That's really exciting."

This article is part of "The Great Transition," a series covering the big changes across industries that are leading to a more sustainable future. For more climate-action news, visit Insider's One Planet hub.