LB was invited to Urban Arrow's first International Dealer Convention last Friday. This two day event on Friday 9th and Saturday 10th brought around 100 dealers to look at plans by this brand and other rivals to increase sales and use of e-cargo bikes and trikes.
In the morning we were bused over to Beverwjick to see Optima in action. Frames for UA come in from Tawain but still lots to do before there's a complete bike. They have a wheelbuilding machine in NL. Back in Optima's Taiwan factory they have very sophisticated frame bending kit to produce frames for the UA and DutchID brand (Steps and Bosch varieties - all e-bikes). Recumbent bikes are no longer made by them - though I did see a red High Baron as used by @Dave of this forum. :-)
Speakers included Arne Behrensen from cargobike.jetzt and Kevin Mayne from Cycling Industries Europe. thye were non-aligned to UA and just talked about distribution in cities. The fact VW has designed a cargo trike came up (even though it isn't that good). Cycling Industries Europe group want to come up with e-cargo bike standards for EU. This would make buying eadier by fleet managers. In some markets different widths are allowed etc. UK producers in future would align with these of course!
Some Edinburgh customers appeared on a slide or two.
We had a busy day of one factory visit and three seminars. Felt like a student again!
Nice to meet dealers from Antwerp, Atlanta, Odense, Keil, London and elswhere. Mainland European ones were all having a laugh at Brexit if course and asking us what we were going to do.
UA themselves have had to re-align their promotion plans for Great Britain. (N Ireland has its own very strict e-bike rules not aligned with either the UK or EU).
Talking to the dealer from Fahrradladen Rückenwind in Keil he sells all brands there but still finds it a tough market. With single market he often gets Danes visiting him to buy (Danish) cargo bikes like Christiania.
One sad / shocking news story that got mentioned a lot was the accident that happened with the Stint e-cargo quad (not a bike though as rider just stands and whole item works with throttle). Some in the Dutch media just considered it a bike accident.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45717871
We'd noticed Stints in use by PostNL last year. Stint is now banned in NL.
Day ended meeting up bike dealer and his wife on way to Schipol to get last Easyjet flight home. As always we found the public transport very easy to use with Metro, tram and bus interchanges quick and frequent.
UA guys drove us in mini-buses to get over North Sea canal to Zandaam and onto Beverwjick. The motorway network in Amsterdam is at least as big as Glasgow (bigger I think) and it was noticeable that in the western part of town we stayed in, cycle rates seemed lower than you might expect (industrial zone though).
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