From 2020 into 2021, there was only one movement in terms of sales: Upwards. Bicycles sold like hotcakes. Until stocks were completely empty, both at suppliers and specialist retailers. From the second half of 2021, this upward trend flattened out considerably: massive delivery problems left their mark and sales figures fell significantly.

2022 also got off to a slow start in the first half of the year. From the middle of the year, however, the market situation normalized noticeably and the order backlogs were cleared, in some cases like an avalanche. By the end of the year, 218,730 new e-bikes had rolled onto the market, an increase of 17% compared to 2021. The situation is not quite as rosy for purely muscle-powered bikes, of which 264,832 were delivered. This means that the sales ratio of bikes to e-bikes in Switzerland is now 55 to 45 percent. It is therefore foreseeable that every second bike sold will soon be an e-bike.

Gravel top, mountain bikes weaken

According to the survey by the Swiss Bicycle and E-Bike Center, there have been some significant shifts within the various segments: Among bicycles, the run on high-quality racing bikes and gravel bikes is striking. The latter even more than doubled their sales figures, while the sales figures for mountain bikes fell significantly in some cases.

In the e-bike segment, the shift from e-mountain bikes to SUV e-bikes and so-called crossover e-bikes, which were recorded as such in a separate category for the first time, has become even more pronounced. For the first time, this resulted in fewer e-mountainbikes being sold than in the previous year. The previous year's boom in e-road bikes and gravel e-bikes also leveled off significantly. Fully-equipped city e-bikes, on the other hand, once again made significant gains and now account for the lion's share of electric leisure, city and everyday bikes with just under 70,000 units sold.

The magic figure of half a million new bikes sold is now reserved for the Swiss bicycle market in 2020. Around 493,000 new bikes changed hands in 2021. Compared to the previous year 2021, however, the entire Swiss bicycle market shrank in terms of units for the second time in a row in 2022 by 2 percent (2021 -1.5 percent) to 48,3562 units.