A thousand e-bikes are stolen every day in German-speaking countries, according to the manufacturer of a GPS tracking system for e-bikes rather than an administrative body. According to federal crime statistics, 4423 reports of stolen e-bikes were received in Switzerland in 2019.
Image: ©Maria Kirchner Photography

PowUnity uses stylish graphics to highlight the extent of e-bike theft. On closer inspection, one wonders how the figures were arrived at. On the one hand, there are the e-bike thefts in the German-speaking area, then there is talk of bicycle thefts in Germany and the number of unreported cases is cheekily factored in. This adds up to around 300,000 e-bike thefts, which is what it takes to reach a crime sum of 100 million euros. By comparison, 4423 e-bikes were reported stolen to the police in Switzerland in 2019.

The calculation may be somewhat adventurous, but the fact remains that high-quality bicycles and e-bikes are attractive theft targets. PowUnity is doing its educational work to sell its GPS tracking system. The tracker is hidden in the motor of the e-bike, making it undetectable to thieves. If the bike is moved, the system sounds the alarm via a mobile app. You can then take up the pursuit yourself or send the police on the thief's trail using the tracking signal. In February 2020, a major theft was foiled in Austria thanks to this system. The van with 56 stolen e-bikes was stopped by a police patrol 240 kilometers from the scene of the crime. Thanks to the tracking system, the law enforcement officers knew where to wait for the gang.

BikeTrax is the name of the system sold by the Innsbruck-based company PowUnity. The computer magazine Chip tested other systems. It is important that the tracker is camouflaged on the bike and cannot simply be removed. If the bike is stolen, it should be retrieved before it is hidden in a place without reception or the tracker's battery is empty. An experiment by the Sonntagszeitung newspaper shows that locating and reclaiming a bike is not always easy. On velojagd.ch you can track how an unlocked bike was stolen several times over several days in Geneva, Bern and Zurich.

It should be noted that many thefts can be prevented with a high-quality lock and a careful choice of parking location (no dark corners where thieves can pick it at their leisure, sometimes take the bike into the building). With e-bikes, at least occasional thieves are deterred if you take the battery and control unit with you. And finally, there are electric bikes that can be configured so that they can only be unlocked using the owner's smartphone.