If you’ve been following e-bike news over the past couple of years, you’ve probably read the same gloomy storyline on repeat: inventory piles up, brands consolidate, and prices slide as the market “cools off.” It’s a tidy narrative. It’s also only half the picture.
New data from PeopleForBikes, developed with market research firm Circana, tells a more interesting story — one where the U.S. electric bicycle market isn’t shrinking so much as quietly changing shape. And just as that shift is taking hold, a fresh round of proposed federal tariffs threatens to add friction to the entire category. Here’s what riders and owners need to know.
Hidden Sales: The Market Was Twice as Big as We Thought
For 2024, the conventional retail numbers painted a bicycle market worth about $6.6 billion — down roughly 8% year over year, which is where the “contraction” headline came from. But when PeopleForBikes measured direct-to-consumer sales — the bikes sold straight from brand websites, largely invisible to traditional retail tracking — it counted roughly 450,000 units worth about $800 million that the standard reports had missed. Add another 80,000 e-bikes moving on peer-to-peer marketplaces, and nearly 1,000,000 e-bikes changed hands in 2024.
In other words, accounting for the channels most market data ignores effectively doubles the known size of the U.S. e-bike market. The “slowdown” was real for bike shops, but the bike was still selling — just through different doors.
From Weekend Toy to Daily Driver
The most telling signal is who is buying and why. In resale data from Upway, commuter-oriented models made up 54% of sales. Cargo e-bikes — the long-tailed, kid-and-grocery-hauling workhorses — landed around $100 million in U.S. sales on roughly 38,500 units in 2024, making it one of the fastest-growing slices of the market. At the 2026 National Bicycle Dealers Association Summit, Upway’s Alessandro Pregel noted that its strongest longtail cargo models often sell within a day of being listed.
That’s not enthusiast behavior. That’s someone treating an e-bike the way they’d treat a second car or a transit pass: a tool for getting somewhere, with someone, carrying something.
Throttles Are Winning (and That Matters for Lawmakers)
As statehouses and city councils debate how to classify and regulate e-bikes, one data point should give them pause: of the direct-to-consumer e-bikes PeopleForBikes measured in 2024, 98% were throttle-equipped. Upway’s resale numbers point the same direction, with buyers favoring throttles and faster Class 3 or hybrid Class 2/3 bikes that throttle up to 20 mph but allow pedal-assist up to 28 mph.
The easy read is “riders want speed.” The likelier explanation is practical: a parent hauling a child’s seat or a week of groceries values the extra help getting moving from a dead stop, climbing a hill, or merging into traffic. As legislators weigh throttle restrictions — often in the abstract — this is data on how people actually ride.
A Healthy Used Market Lowers the Cost of Entry
The third signal is the easiest to overlook and possibly the most important for growing ridership. A used e-bike market is emerging and it’s healthy: e-bikes carried the lowest stock-to-sale ratio of any bicycle category in 2024, meaning listings sell almost as fast as they appear, and used e-bike sales are growing faster than used traditional bikes. Upway now sources roughly two-thirds of its inventory directly from consumers rather than dealers, and residual values — after falling from pandemic peaks — stabilized and began recovering in 2025.
Affordability is consistently the largest barrier to e-bike adoption. A working resale market lowers the entry price, creates trade-in pathways that make a new purchase easier to justify, and reaches first-time riders who would never buy new. Every used e-bike that changes hands is another rider on the road.
The Tariff Cloud on the Horizon
None of this growth is guaranteed. On June 22, 2026, the U.S. Trade Representative announced new Section 301 trade actions that could hit the bike industry hard. The proposal lays out new 10–12.5% tariffs on roughly 60 countries — including every major bicycle source nation. Countries that have taken partial steps against forced labor (Cambodia, Taiwan, EU members, the UK, Indonesia, Malaysia) would face a 10% tariff; everyone else, including China, Thailand, Japan, Vietnam, and Switzerland, would face 12.5%. A separate investigation into intellectual property protections in Vietnam could add still more tariffs on top of that.
PeopleForBikes is organizing industry opposition and has urged members to submit comments — but the comment windows have already closed (Vietnam’s July 2, the forced-labor deadline July 6, and the China tariff-modification window July 10). If these tariffs land, they’ll touch the exact entry-level and mid-price bikes that are pulling new riders in. Electric Bike Report’s weekly podcast (TWR Ep. 90, July 5) flagged the same concern, alongside industry moves like Rad Power’s parent company acquiring off-road brand QuietKat and the arrival of high-output 30A fast chargers that promise to cut charge times dramatically.
For context on the upside: Germany — one of the world’s most mature e-bike markets — sold about 3.85 million total bikes in 2024, roughly 2.05 million of them electric, according to the German industry association ZIV. E-bikes were about 53% of that market. In the U.S., they were about 7%. The U.S. has the larger overall bike market but a fraction of the electric adoption — which, looked at another way, is a measure of how much room is left to grow.
What This Means for Owners
A few takeaways if you already ride or are thinking about it:
- Buy used with confidence. Residual values are stabilizing and the resale market is liquid, so a quality pre-owned e-bike is a better deal than ever.
- Know your class. With throttle rules under debate, understand whether your bike is Class 1, 2, or 3 and how local laws treat each — it affects where you can ride.
- Keep it running. As more everyday riders depend on e-bikes for commuting and errands, reliability matters more than ever. A bike that’s your transportation deserves the same attention you’d give a car.
At Radius Onsite, this last point is the whole reason we exist. When an e-bike is how you get to work or drop the kids at school, a dead battery or a misaligned brake isn’t a nuisance — it’s a missed appointment. Our mobile e-bike repair, inspection, and maintenance service comes to you, so the bike that’s become part of your daily routine stays part of it. Whether it’s a pre-purchase inspection on a used cargo bike or a seasonal tune-up before the commute season, keeping these machines on the road is what we do.
The Bottom Line
The U.S. e-bike market is bigger, broader, and more central to everyday transportation than the headline retail numbers suggest. The buyer has changed, purchase behavior is signaling intent to regulators, a resale market is widening access, and the gap to mature markets like Germany is wide. A new tariff fight adds real uncertainty — but the direction of travel is clear: more Americans are making the e-bike part of how they move. The smart move is to enjoy the ride and take care of the machine that makes it possible.