2020 has been an incredible year for electric vehicles. There are now over 500 EVs on the market today across cars, bikes, scooters, and skateboards, many of which launched in the last year or two.
Despite the recent surge in EV interest, most of the excitement and attention in the industry has been directed at Tesla, in part due to their recent stock market performance.
They’ve certainly earned it, but with so much attention on Tesla, we’re at risk of overlooking some of the other wonderful EV businesses that are growing very fast at scale.
Two in particular come to mind, Rad Power Bikes and VanMoof.
THE STORY OF RAD POWER BIKES
Just a few days ago, Rad Power Bikes CEO Mike Radenbough did an interview on ‘How I Built This’, where he shared some mind-bending growth numbers and milestones with the host, Guy Raz.
A few highlights:
- Rad Power Bikes started 5 years ago with an IndieGogo crowdfunding campaign
- Today, Rad Power Bikes has 25% of America’s electric bike market, and are the largest electric bike producer in the US
- Last year (2019) they did almost $100 million in sales
- This year, they’re on track to grow sales by 300%
- Right now, Rad Power Bikes actually has more bike orders waiting to be fulfilled, than the sum of all bikes the company has ever sold in company history.
HOW BIG IS AMERICA’S ELECTRIC BIKE INDUSTRY?
Let’s do some quick math here.
Rad Power Bikes current models start at $999 for the RadMission 1, and get up to $1,699 for the RadRunner Plus, with an average price across the entire fleet of $1,449.
$400 million in 2020 sales divided by an average purchase price of $1,449 means Rad Power Bikes is on pace to sell upwards of 276K bikes this year.
If those 276K bikes represent 25% of the US electric bikes sold in 2020, that means Americans are on pace to buy roughly 1.1 million electric bikes this year.
For reference, Americans only bought 325,000 electric cars last year, a number that is actually on pace to decrease in 2020 according to EV Volumes. This means Americans are buying 3-4 electric bikes for every electric car purchased this year. Impressive.
THE ELECTRIC BIKE HYPE IS REAL
While Rad Power Bikes certainly got a sales boost from the pandemic, the acceleration of electric bike sales in America was well underway before 2020.
Don’t forget, Rad went from an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign in 2015 to almost $100 million in sales in 2019, before the pandemic hit. 2020 has just added fuel to the fire.
And Rad Power Bikes isn’t the only electric bike company seeing big time growth.
VANMOOF IS EXPANDING
VanMoof is a Netherlands based electric bike company with some big news to share.
Earlier today, VanMoof announced $40 million of fresh fundraising, only four months after raising $13.5 million to expand their business worldwide.
Back in May, the company said that 2019 revenues had quadrupled, from $11.8 million USD to $47.3 million USD.
Then, in today’s press release, VanMoof announced that they expect to top $100 million of sales this year.
That means they’re sitting on a $50 million war chest, with $100 million of annual revenue and triple digit sales growth in each of the last two years. Incredible.
We don’t know much about their profit margins, but I wouldn’t be surprised if VanMoof was already profitable. Rad Power Bikes sure is.
In fact, Rad Power Bikes has been profitable every year since 2015, and they’re on track to go from $0 to almost $400 million in just five years.
If you’re still not sold on the idea that electric bikes are a big deal, I’ll leave you with a prediction.
By 2023, either Rad Power Bikes or VanMoof will be taken public via a SPAC merger, valued above $1 billion.
Tell me why I’m wrong here.