For Monique Svenson, it had become a vicious circle to drop off her two children at daycare and school – each in a different direction from her home.
So she adopted a new cycle.
The Bondi business owner signed up to an e-bike service and chose a model to fit three family members and tested whether they could travel differently.
“I’ve never looked back and I talk about it all day,” she said.
Australian families are being encouraged to ditch their second car for an e-bike, with models powerful enough to carry children and groceries.
‘I never once had to fight the kids to get on the bike, not even in the rain. My daughter likes to turn backwards and wave at people’.
Mrs Svenson said she now used the e-bike to move stock and make deliveries to her Young Bondi toy store and filled her car with petrol only every six weeks.
“I almost replaced the car,” she said. ‘It’s like having a car, but a more convenient version of it.’
Electric bike ownership is racing, and research from Bicycle Industries Australia shows 60,000 e-bikes were sold in 2021, surpassing even the 2020 boom.
While many e-bikes are used by gig workers for food deliveries, brothers Benjamin and Dan Carr said they saw an opportunity for families to switch to two wheels as well.
Their start-up, Lug+Carrie, now has more than 850 subscribers in Sydney and Melbourne and has just launched in Brisbane, where 50 people signed up for test rides ahead of its arrival.
Co-founder Benjamin, who previously launched e-scooter services in Germany, said the idea to help families adopt electric bikes came after seeing so many using them for daily tasks abroad.
“I saw e-bikes everywhere in Europe: everyone was riding e-bikes to schools, dropping the kids off and going to shops, and it was already normalised,” he said. ‘No one would ever question you walking into a coffee shop from an e-bike.
Family-friendly e-bikes are promoted for short trips and as an alternative to secondary cars
‘One of the challenges in Australia is the perception of cycling or riding as a form of transport.’
Managing director Dan said the pair were careful to choose heavy-duty bikes that were capable of carrying more than one passenger and sat low to the ground for stability.
And the start-up has attracted a new audience, with 80 percent of its e-passenger bike subscriptions and 63 percent of its customers being women — a traditionally underrepresented group.
“We’ve been pleasantly surprised that the demographics of people using our bikes are people who wouldn’t generally be thought of as part of the cycling community,” he said.
“There is a really high percentage of customers who ditch their car for the shopping trips and take the kids to guitar lessons or come to the gym.
‘Also 97 percent of people say it’s more fun.’
While Dan said “many, many” customers had replaced their second car with e-bikes, the goal of the startup was to replace short trips of up to 10km rather than the vehicles themselves.
‘We are not trying to replace your weekend drive to Bendigo. We can’t do that, he said.
“But what we can do is replace most of your other trips.”
He said Lug+Carrie planned to expand the business nationally and into U.S. cities by 2023.
Research by Deloitte predicted that 130 million e-bikes would be sold worldwide between 2020 and 2023, with 300 million e-bikes on the road.
Other e-bike subscription services in Australia include Zoomo and Jot Bikes, in addition to short-term e-bike rental services BYKKO, Lime and Beam.
Rachel Ware, who signed up for an e-bike earlier this year and later joined Lug+Carrie, said she expected more Australian families to adopt the mode of transport as most who tried it stuck with it .
“It’s just so much easier than it sounds,” she said.
‘It’s much faster to get where you want to go. You don’t have to worry about parking, looking over your shoulder at kids on their bikes and it’s a great way to spend quality time with your kids.’