(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 574: Second Hand E-Bikes

This week on The Talking Headways podcast we’re joined by Calvin Thigpen of Toole Design and Ysabel Hoogeveen of Upway to discuss a report entitled Refurbished E-bikes: An Affordable Transportation Solution for Cities and Consumers. We chat about costs for used e-bikes and what could help grow the industry.

You can listen to this episode at Streetsblog USA

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Below is a full unedited AI generated transcript of this episode:

Almost more than four years ago right now. And I started to helping grow the business there first in the Benelux from a marketing perspective, and then right now based in, uh, the US based in the East coast in New York.

I was at Lyme, the shared micro mobility company. I just joined though two months ago. Tool design group. So very new there. Very excited to be here. I’m taking the reins of a really strong sort of industry leading new mobility practice, which was built over a decade plus by Adrian Witty and uh, Malia Shilling.

And so yeah, I’m transitioning from being inside the shared micro mobility industry itself. To now helping advise communities across the country on docked bike share, shared micro mobility, but also getting to think about some new things like personally owned E-bikes, which is where I got to work with Isabel and Upway, but also things like micro transit and neighborhood electric vehicles and mobility hubs.

So getting to branch out a bit, which is exciting. So yeah, I’ll stop there, but that’s my new update since we last talked.

I.

Because having a bike brings you from A to B. In a super fast way. And also it gives you kind of an emotional type of freedom. Like there’s no car queuing, uh, there’s not a lot of cost. So I think for me it’s kind of common sense that everyone kind of in the world should be able to have a bike through their home to, to allow it.

And that’s also why I still enjoy working at Upway, because basically our mission is. To get more people access to accessible bikes. So that’s kind of a bit of my background. And I think it’s a bit, again, like a bit of an emotional feeling that, you know, it brings me from A to B in a super fast way. It gives me a lot of freedom and it also gives me a lot of joy.

So very, you know, I’ve always been very interested in technology. Then I went to uc, Davis, and. You know, if you’ve heard of Davis or been to Davis, you know it’s a bike mecca and you know, it really transformed my relationship with bicycling. I hadn’t, I didn’t bike a lot outside of like when I was a pretty young kid and I ended up sticking around.

I got my undergrad and my graduate degrees at uc, Davis. And I mean, my dissertation was really about that experience about you know, it was quantitative. I did surveys, I did the whole nine yards. It was robust, but really about like how experiences with bicycling affect people’s sort of attitudes, skills, abilities for life.

And so I think, you know, combining those two, I’ve always really appreciated. How transportation technologies affect sustainability, how they get people where they need to go, and I’m always really excited by new solutions that help people get out of cars and find sort of two-wheeled or or other sustainable transportation options.

There’s underpasses. Underneath. And so it was funny, I, I’ll have a podcast coming out about this soon, but you know, a friend of mine, Steve anz, who works at Streets Bog Chicago, he lived there too for a little while when he was a kid, and when he moved to Illinois, he felt. Stunted, you know, he felt like he couldn’t go places.

’cause when we were kids, we’d ride our bikes to the grocery store, to the baseball card shop to get a smoothie or whatever it was. And then when he moved away, he couldn’t anymore. And then later on he found out that, it followed the Dutch planning norms of layered destinations and things like that.

So it’s interesting to have. The three of us in the space talking about this, especially when we all grew up in places or at least lived in places where the bike was more important than a vehicle in some senses. So I appreciate that a lot. Ysabel, I’m wondering how Upway got started as a business, because this is new to me.

It is in the report. It’s not as well known as maybe some other organizations or companies that might be doing similar things or something along those lines.

So basically what we’re doing in the US we’re trying to build the leading platform when it comes to certified pre-owned bikes. So basically, I always give the example, if you think about Carvana, uh, did for cars is bringing kind of infrastructure to the used market. It’s this exactly the same that we’re doing for E-bikes.

So what we do in-house, it’s super simple. We buy used e-bikes, then we refurbish them in-house, and then we resell them online and in person, fully certified. So that means throughout the whole US you can either come shop online or you can come in any point of our locations on the West coast and east coast come by it in person.

So then I think one of the main question that might come is like, Hey, Ysabel Hoogeveen, like where does these bikes come from? So we source the e-bike from different types of, uh, sources. One of them is consumers. So you or the listeners, can sell their e-bike through Upway, basically also how you can sell your car to Carvana.

Secondly, um, we buy from rental and leasing companies, so in bigger kind of overstock batches. And we also have a network with retailers. Then as a next step, as soon as we have those e-bikes in-house, we refurbish them in our op centers. So op centers are our kind of centralized hubs where we have our in-house mechanics, where we refurbish every bike and then again, like we deliver them to the customers at home.

Or you can come pick up in person and kind of at the core of the business, like in general, we care a lot about affordability because we believe that affordability helps E-bike adoption. Reliability. And also of course also trust because in the end, like we see also that people might be a bit hesitant when it comes to refurbished products.

So that’s why we do a lot of like checkpoints. We have a 50 point inspection program to make sure we inspect everything from the bike. But that’s a bit about Upway.

But it still seems like it’s a little bit behind, uh, European market, which makes sense. But I’m curious like what the market’s like and. when you’re getting these bikes, like you mentioned, who is selling them, where are you getting them from? Like here in the San Francisco specifically, I know Calvin, you’ve seen this all the time too, is like we’ve seen a ton of delivery workers taking e-bikes and a lot of them will rent them from other places or their emoto’s.

You know, there’s the difference between the two. So maybe first I’ll just ask like, what’s the market look like?

Especially, uh, when it comes to, like after the COVID period, a lot of manufacturers have been producing still a lot of new products. That’s why there was a lot of overstock into the market. Um, which is being resold to others. So there are enough like e-bikes in circulation. Of course, delivery workers are using them.

But still, when you look at, uh, California, one of our biggest market currently, like e-bike adoption starts to really uptick. And yes, if we, for example, take, uh. I don’t know, maybe an example like Germany, like if e-bikes in the US were as popular in Germany today, we’re looking at the a $33 billion markets in annual sales for E-bikes alone.

So yeah, I think like for example, we look always a lot in at Upway, at the Germany market because if we see how that market is kind of trending upward, this is also kind of the trajectory that the US should follow.

There’s a, there’s a price level that you can get e-bikes versus a regular bike, and so there’s obviously, um, folks who have multiple e-bikes or they can afford to have an e-bike. The people in, in my neighborhood, they’re usually, putting their kids in the box and, and then riding down the street.

But I’m curious about that too, is like, who needs them at the moment and who can actually afford them.

If you think, for example, like the California rebate, Minnesota rebate, there are a lot of states that starting to invest them. I think the bigger question is like, hey, I think in general we should expand eligibility of people that can actually own an E-bike. And that’s where potentially refurbished e-bike could be an option to get more kind of adoption per dollar spent.

Like a rebate voucher can go up to $$1,500 per e-bike off. So I think when it comes to. The people that need them versus the people that can afford them. And especially I think it’s a hot topic right now with also the raising gas prices is that hopefully we hope to see a trend that people are. getting away from car ownership and moving to an e-bike ownership.

And I think there, like we just did a research and we see that in the annual cost of owning a car is over $15,000, whereas an e-bike costs you just a bit more than one K per year. So I think when it comes to need versus own, I don’t have a hundred percent the answer on it. But I think like leasing, re rebate vouchers, I think like all these types of subsidies, specifically from a state level, will help us allow to reach also people that really need it when it comes to delivery workers, maybe the low income families, like these are types of tactics that we should implement to increase the e-bike adoption.

Recipients. So making sure those people can afford a high quality E-bike. And I think one thing that maybe is missing is the people who are just above that threshold. And I think that’s potentially where services like Upway can come in is Upway, offers, you know. 30, 40, 50, 60% or more discounts, you know that that makes it much more reasonable for you to buy a bike that’s actually gonna last you a long time.

It’s gonna serve all of your needs, be it, school commute, groceries, et cetera. And so I do think there is a little bit with evolution of the e-bike rebate programs, I think there’s a little bit of a sort of a missing middle that I think Upway and other similar services and sort of affordability efforts can help plug that hole a bit.

They might be able to be living and surviving, but they’re not necessarily. Thriving. And so Ysabel’s point is really important about the $15,000 a year that it takes to maintain a car in addition to buying and owning it. And so the E-bike might be actually a part of that equation in terms of making sure that people can get to that next level, which actually in the report they say like people are just within like 12% of actually being of that stability, like 43% or something along those lines of those folks.

What’s interesting about that is that like with the proper value exchange through maybe getting rid of a car and, and buying an e-bike, you might actually be able to get to those goals and be a little bit more financially stable. But I’m also curious, like how does an e-bike specifically like compare cost to like a refurbished bike?

Because you are looking at refurbished bikes, the e-bikes are being sold. Like Calvin said, they’re, they can be kind of expensive and they do have the rebate programs that we were just talking about, but like, what’s the difference between like, say buying a used bike or buying a new one?

The cost of owning an e-bike and kind of a bike acquisition and not talking about new versus used. We’re only talking about like, again, like the acquisition, then maybe a helmet, a lock, maybe some insurance for the for theft. That would be always helpful, and then a little bit of maintenance and charging, and it’ll cost you less than than 1.5 k when we only talk about, let’s say, the average prices that we have at Upway.

So when we think about like all the certified pre-owned E-bikes that exist right now. The average price is around 1.9 K, so $1,900 for a refurbished certified E-bike.

And after the first year where there’s a big decline, it sort of tapers off. And after about two years, you can expect a, an average discount of. About 45%, give or take, compared to buying essentially the same bike, brand new,

And the price of an average e-bike. I mean, as you said, Ysabel is, is about, like again, new e-bike is actually north of $2,000. It’s probably more like $2,600 or so. And so 200 to $600 off, that gets you close to $2,000. But then the discount on Upway is like two to six times bigger than that. It’s more like almost $1,200 off of your sort of typical e-bike.

So again, it’s I think what’s. Exciting to me about up way is that it, it has the potential to get like a very high quality e-bike. In the hands of everyday people. Everyday Americans, as opposed to maybe trying, you know, doing what you can to get like the very basic entry level e-bike, which doesn’t last as long.

Might need more maintenance and just, you know, is not gonna be as enjoyable of a ride. Whereas, you know, some of the higher quality ones will really last a long time and be very safe in addition to being much more affordable.

So I ended up doing it for, I think it was TRB actually a number of years ago. That makes sense. Before the pan, before the pandemic. Or at least 20. Or 2020 maybe.

But I think the most important part, and that’s also uh, why we work together with Calvin, is just talking about like reliability of certified or refurbished products. And I think the main question that customers might have is like, how reliable is it if you refurbish like an e-bike? And I think like when it comes to the components, like.

We cover like everything, like we cover like 15 points. Again, what I highlighted is that we do before, uh, an e-bike comes in and goes out, we do a 15 point inspection. So it’s a list where we go over mechanical parts, but also like the battery and so on to make sure that the value of the e-bike is still correct.

And I think like based on the data and the research that we have done, is that the reliability of a new E-bike versus pre-owned e-bike is just a 1%. Less um, the reason why we could do this report, uh, we both have new e-bikes at Upway, but also pre-owned e-bikes. And we see that again, the reliability is basically at par as new e-bikes just because we do like a super good inspection.

We have high maintenance practice, we have in-house mechanics that go every. All over the e-bikes, including I think, the main components, which is the battery and the motor, because that basically saves you on an e-bike and like this data report that is done both like in-house and with external data shows that the reliability of it is just at par and it costs you like, uh, hundreds less.

Or a hydraulic disc brake, are you gonna use a quick release skewer or a through-axle? There are some trade-offs that you have to make in order to manufacture something that’s at an affordable price point, new. And then there’s other things like battery range and you know, motor, you know, quality and things like that, that you can certainly start to step up and up and up.

So I think those are some of the trade offs that I was sort of alluding to is like, if you’re able to afford a higher quality e-bike, it’s gonna have hydraulic brake disc brakes, it’s gonna have a through axle, it’s just gonna be a safer, more stable ride for you and require less maintenance over time for you as the end user.

And so it’s, I have two e-bikes. One is, was our first one and so is the more affordable one. We were dipping our toes in and then we got a, a higher, you know, higher price, higher quality one. They’re both running just great, but we’ve had to do more maintenance on the earlier, more affordable one than, than the other.

So it’s more trade-offs like that than like true safety.

There are some headlines, uh, about like fire in, in apartment buildings and so on. I think one thing that is kind of rest assured is that the only electronical. Components that we touch on an e-bike is again, is the battery motor and some other small components like lights and so on. But when it comes to batteries, we only work with the high manufacturer companies such as Shimano that are already existing for years and years in the market, and that only have shown proven success where there hasn’t been any issue.

So these are also, and that’s why we have kind of a curated brand list. Only those brands that have those batteries that we only so sell those.

You know, not only is it are you thinking about affordability and reliability, and that matters of course for consumers, but cities care about that too. But with this sort of battery safety piece, it’s also making sure you’re getting affordable but safe bikes in the, in the hands of people who might be, say, a delivery worker or with whoever and making sure that.

There’s not unsafe batteries being charged, you know, in bodega, you know, in New York City, in, you know, bodega basements or in a, you know, apartment complex. Uh, ’cause there have been unfortunately, a number of sort of high profile, tragic battery fires. And so I think. This is really like a lower profile benefit of Upway.

You know that it sells lab certified and lab tested e-bikes, but it’s actually, even though it’s low profile, I think it’s one of the bigger benefits of the service.

And I think like here, just the solution should be like, probably like a standardization and control, because I totally agree as well that like the safety in general might slow down the, the bike adoption. Or e-bike adoption. But I think how it is, it’s like a, it’s like a quality problem, not like the e-bike or bike problem in general.

I live in an old. San Francisco house, I put my regular bike in the utility room, but an E-bike is bigger and it won’t fit in there. And also I have some steps that I would have to bring it down. Right. So it’s pretty, they’re pretty heavy vehicles generally because of the batteries. I’m curious like where people usually put them or like if storage is one of those concerns that people have when they’re thinking about purchasing one.

Like I think in general there needs to be more places. Which have like secure bike parking, but also more bike lanes. So what I see right now, I think a lot of states are investing in bike parking, but under investing kind of storage, I think in general we need to push more for locked bike hops, maybe.

Also in the Netherlands we have a lot of like indoor parking and buildings. So for example, at all biggest like metro and train station, like we have indoor parkings as well as covered stations. I think in, uh, in New York I see also more and more these types of hubs. I think a lot of. Like smaller companies are popping up on like bike storage, bike park, safety hubs.

So in general, I think where they storage, it’s like either in buildings or outside. But I do agree as well that I think like states right now, they underinvest in storage.

They’d have to put it like in a courtyard or something like that. So, yeah, I think definitely agree. There’s, there’s a strong need for more secure long-term parking. I think, you know, more bike rooms in large, especially like larger. Apartment complexes or, you know, commercial buildings. I think San Francisco was trialing some new sort of covered long-term bike parking.

I would love to see that. Throughout the city as long as it was weatherproof and you weren’t gonna get rained on. And then the other thing that you know pops into my mind is, you know, the other way around this challenge of where do I park my expensive e-bike that I don’t want stolen is you could rely on bike share.

It doesn’t solve every use case, but that’s another alternative is, you know, making sure that bike share is accessible and available throughout a city.

I

Like you, Jeff, maybe they’ve never been on an e-bike and they try it and they say, whoa, this is transformational. In a city like San Francisco, that’s very hilly. And then they start using it and it just, you know, assuming they have the storage and the ability to purchase it, they say, yeah, no brainer. I’m gonna buy one of my own.

Um, so I, I would guess that it’s pretty synergistic that there are folks who use that, you know, that’s the gateway to buying their own. Yeah.

And so,

I’m curious about like these companies like Rivian and car companies that are getting into e-bike production. I imagine there’s some probably robust production in in Asia and other places where they have already have like two and three wheelers that are pretty ubiquitous. I’m wondering like what the production’s like, because I know that we’ve had companies here, like Rad Power Bikes and even Super Pedestrian went out of business, whether you have the Copenhagen Wheel.

Van Moof, which had a showroom close to my house, is gone. so I’m curious about that, like the production of new e-bikes and like how that leads into the resale market. If, if some of these bike distributors disappear.

It’s,

So I think there, there is that, there’s a reason companies can go through bankruptcy and then, and then come back. But I do think we have a pretty robust ecosystem of different. Manufacturers, and this isn’t my area of expertise of research, but my understanding is there’s been some challenges in the sort of aftermath of COVID-19.

I think you alluded to this, Ysabel, of like there was a big boom and then there was kind of a bust and now we’re trying to to get back out of it. But my understanding is that the overall, the e-bike industry is still, still pretty healthy. But Ysabelbably have a better finger on the pulse there.

I think also when it comes to manufacturers, like of course, like the tariffsing to get a play. Like in the end also, like tariffse here for protecting the domestic manufacturing, but they also of course like increase like the cost for these manufacturers. For us at Upwaybecause we do not manufacture the bike, it’s not really an issue, but, uh, the market itself, it’s turning from more like an oversupply market towards an undersupplied market.

Even car companies, they’re like ubiquitous. Like that’s how they get their visibility. So how can you compete with that? You know, if somebody’s considering a car versus an e-bike, and maybe they don’t know, an e-bike might be available to them because the advertising is just overwhelming.

I think first of all, car owners could be also like potential e-bike owners, but it can also be that the audience is definitely totally different because we see people that also own an E-bike are not definitely like owning specifically a car. So I think when it comes to that, like it’s not really competitive with each other.

I think it’s right now, especially in the us, how I see it like it’s a piece of a market. We, there are so many. Inhabitants here. Like it’s almost as big as Europe, you know? So I think we see it almost like, like different countries within each other, and we’re just trying to bring awareness that E-bikes exist here in the US step by step.

So I think when it comes to competing with. Companies like Carvan app, but they also exist already for multiple years in the market here. Whereas at, we just started like three years ago, we’re, and we’re building up the business and it’s super easy to burn a lot of money here in this country and raise awareness.

But in the end, you also wanted to do it in a smart way. So when it comes to being smart, I think you wanna be in the market where your current customers are. So for us, for example, that means for us that means is we see a strong e-bike adoption on both the East coast and the west coast. So that’s why we also have our hubs there.

Like California is one of our biggest market and still it has over 50 million inhabitants. So we just try to be like really close to our customers where they are currently, already are.

I think one of the things that we actually saw, we asked people in the survey that I ran for this report, are you familiar with Up Way? Are you familiar? Carvana CarMax, are you familiar with, turn or Rad? And you know, about one in 20 people said that they were familiar with Upway, which frankly, like I think Jeff, like you, I, I hadn’t heard of up way before last year.

So I do think there’s a bit of a sort of uphill challenge to move that towards where some of those more recognized brands are. But at the same time, like the vehicles are kind of their own advertisement, right? Like E-bikes are still new to most people in the US and so they’re still eye catching. I drop my kids off at school every day and just those sort of natural evolution of.

first year there was like a couple dads or moms on e-bikes and now there’s like dozens dropping off on E-bikes. It might be slower than if we had, you know, the advertising budgets of some of those car companies. But it’s happening, um, and it’s sort of a natural evolution of people saying, Hey, you know, now that there’s other people to talk to, there’s that sort of natural conversation and adoption.

And so you have no idea what’s going on, even if you’re looking at that ad.

Thinking about the difference between the pummeling of Americans by a car company advertisement versus like the idea that you can maybe educate a few new people in that way.

Like definitely bike sharing for us is not competing at all. Like bike sharing for us is actually the best entry point to potential owning an e-bike. You know, like ownership. It’s kind of what comes next. I think we really see it kind of complimenting each other. A potential Citi bike e-bike user is, might.

Likely to buy probably an e-bike on a later stage because this person see it first, like bike sharing as low commitment it, they try to use it. They have it kind of occasionally and then at some point they wanna include it in their daily commuting. They see more kind of the cost efficiency because in yet it all sums up also the bike sharing.

Uh, they see that the e-bikes are reliable, so we really see it also like kind of all the city bike, uh, users, especially what I see here in, in, in New York that can potentially own later on. Also an e-bike by themselves.

I do think there’s a little bit of like truth or, or lack thereof in advertising like. E bikes actually deliver on what everyone says it is, as opposed to having to create false realities of like car-free cities where you’re the only driver going through, you know, I think they actually deliver on what they say they’ll do.

I’m wondering about the, like, the momentum for e-bikes, especially given this moment in time where the administration currently has the tariffs, as you mentioned, Ysabel, but there’s also like the push against, uh, environmental regulations and standards, the trying to get rid of the endangerment, finding those types of things.

I’m wondering what the, like continued movement is forward for this industry, but just like, you know, sustainable transportation writ large because of that in your minds.

I think when it comes to bike infrastructure, bike lanes, um, bike parking, I think this is really important. Secondly, I think it’s affordability. I think in general, like we’re very happy to see that rebate programs are pop popping up because I think this helps people also allow purchasing, uh, potential e-bikes.

And then I think thirdly is within those rebate programs, not in all the rebate programs. Refurbished E-bikes are eligible, so it’s only on new e-bikes. But when we talked about the price difference between new e-bikes and refurbished e-bikes, uh, you can still save a lot. So you can almost cover the whole price of an refurbished e-bikes, which are rebate programs.

So I think including certified refurbished e-bikes into the program will help. And I would say these are my kind of three main pillars to increase the, the e-bike adoption.

There’s just this huge. Total addressable market of people who have yet to really give it a try. And I think, you know, the economic sort of argument in terms of affordability, the energy security argument as we are, at war with Iran and gas prices are. Increasing rapidly. Mm-hmm. You know, I think there’s a lot of arguments to be made, even absent sort of the broader sort of, you know, funding for sustainable transportation options, things like that.

Like I think there’s just a very bottom up groundswell of desire for affordable transportation options. I’ll also say like, I think over time as people, you know, have more exposure, their friend buys a bike or they go to the World Cup. Or the Olympics and they go to a city where they tried, uh, e-bike or an e scooter, you know, that’s another opportunity to get more people exposed and, and trying these, these new modes out.

So there’s definitely headwinds, but I think kind of like with renewable energy, I think a lot of this, the momentum has already been built. And it’s just a matter of, you know, whether that’s gonna increase really rapidly or, or maybe at a more steady rate. It’s gonna continue to grow.

Okay. And so there you go, that going to a different city and trying to get around, you can go through the two, but you can’t catch any map shops that way. out, out in the inlands. Here’s my last question for you all. What’s interesting to you about this moment in time in transportation and specifically related to e-bikes, but it could be with just kind of how we’re moving.

And you answered this a little bit, but I’d like to hear a little bit more. Sure.

There’s a lot of controversy right now about it. a lot of people. Worried about e-bike safety. We’ve seen some really bad examples, in my opinion, of bills, for example, in New Jersey, which got rid of the three class system, imposed a whole slew of barriers to actually using e-bikes. So on that side, very concerning.

On the other side, Oregon just passed what I would say is much more progressive legislation around e-bike safety. You know, really addressing the issue of Emos lowering the age limit from 16 to 14 for I think it was Class one E-bikes. And so I think what was encouraging about that in particular is to me that that’s a more progressive way of trying to strike the balance of addressing valid safety concerns around overpowered.

High speed emoto’s that kids really should not be on. Like you need a driver’s license to be on those as opposed to getting kids around, going 10, 15 miles an hour when they’re 14 years old and looking, you know, need that independence, want that independence. And striking a balance between the, the safety concerns.

And the, the really valuable, uh, you know, maybe this is full circle, you know, the valuable experiences you get as a kid being independent on two wheels. So I think this is a really, really important moment. You know, I know bills are being, considered in California, many other states, and just on a very personal level, you know, I’m a father of two.

I wanna encourage my kids to get around safely, independently around San Francisco. And so it feels very relevant to me right now. And so I, I really hope to see more of the sort of Oregon style type regulations that really tries to distinguish between the dangers of Emos. But really uphold the benefits of, especially some of the like Class one E-bikes for youth mobility, which is, again, I think we’re seeing some of that in California being advanced as well.

So it’s a really important moment. I hope we get it right, um, because we really, we don’t wanna ban e-bikes. We, or, you know, real or defacto bands. We, you know, we really wanna keep encouraging this mode. So I do think it’s an important moment.

First is trust and safety. Again, we talked a lot about it, but I think like battery safety has becoming a real topic, especially me. I’m living in New York, like I see it everywhere. But again, it’s not an e-bike problem, it’s an quality problem. So I think we need to have like controlled system and because without kind of this trust like adoption of bikes and e-bikes won’t scale.

I think secondly, again, affordability. I think at the same time, like anything that is happening on, uh, tariffsd supply chain shifts, prices are going up. So I think this also creates a bit of like tension in, in the market, in the new market was also in a used market. And I think e-bikes and especially like the bikes at Upway like this is one of the most powerful tools to reduce the cost of living for commuters.

It actually reduced a lot of costs if you switch from car, uh, dependency to e-bikes. And that’s, I think especially like certified refurbished e-bikes or even like subscription that we have available at Upway, is becoming critical. Then I think thirdly is infrastructure. I think the interest is really there.

You know, we see it in a lot of states and what Calvin is mentioning on like Oregon in sf, in Los Angeles, in New York. But I think we haven’t unlocked in all the states like. All the usability of of it. So I think like things like secured bike parking, charging stations, and also having this in all of the cities is super important.

And I think like those three pillars, safety, affordability, and the infrastructure will really help us to unlock the growth of the e-bikes.

But yeah, we would love to have people take a read. You know, we didn’t, we didn’t cover all the nitty gritty of their report, but you know, there’s survey data in there. Uh, there’s data, you know, a lot of analysis based on Upway. Sales and repair and sort of defect and return data. So I really hope people give it a read and we will reach out if they have any questions.