2020 2020 European Electric Scooter & Electric Bicycle Market ReviewEuropean Electric Scooter & Electric Bicycle Market Review

2020 was a year like no other for the European micromobility industry. As the COVID-19 pandemic reshaped urban transportation patterns, electric scooters and bicycles experienced unprecedented demand. With public transport viewed as a potential health risk, European consumers turned en masse to personal mobility devices. Governments responded with generous subsidies, and Chinese manufacturers worked around the clock to keep up with orders that often exceeded supply by months.

This series of three blog posts, based on industry reports and market data published in 2020, aims to fill the historical gap for the KUKIRIN brand blog, documenting the year when micromobility truly went mainstream.

Part 1: The Pandemic Pivot – How COVID-19 Created a Micromobility Boom

As European nations emerged from lockdown in May 2020, a remarkable transformation was taking place on city streets. Commuters who once packed subway cars and buses were now pedaling or gliding to work on two wheels. The bicycle-and its electric-powered cousin-had become the unlikely hero of the pandemic recovery.

From Fear to Freedom

The trigger was simple: fear. With COVID-19 transmission risks associated with crowded public transport, millions of Europeans sought alternatives. Germany's Bild newspaper declared "the bicycle is the winner of the crisis" as images of bike-filled streets circulated across social media .

What began as a safety-driven shift quickly accelerated into a full-blown purchasing frenzy. By June, retailers across the continent were reporting empty shelves and months-long waiting lists. In France, Easybike-a company that had been on the brink of bankruptcy-suddenly found its order book filled through the end of the year .

The Numbers That Defined the Boom

Data from Alibaba's cross-border e-commerce platform AliExpress painted a dramatic picture of the surge :

Bicycles saw even more explosive growth in some markets:

In Russia, May bicycle sales reached 60 times the volume of the same period the previous year .

"We Sold a Week's Stock in One Day"

Behind these staggering percentages were real businesses scrambling to keep up. Janobike, a Chinese electric scooter brand selling into Europe, saw its overseas warehouse stock depleted within a week of reopening. "The second batch was pre-ordered before it even arrived," founder Li Xiaolong recalled. "We've now quadrupled our third shipment." His upstream frame supplier had already shifted to 24-hour production .

Similarly, Sheng Milo, another electric mobility brand, reported that orders in May doubled compared to April. "Our workers are staying until midnight every day, and orders are still booked out a month in advance," operations manager He Chong said. The company was urgently hiring, planning to double both its factory space and workforce .

Even the French brand Vélos-Mad, founded just two years earlier, sold as many bikes in two months as it had in all of 2019. Founder Guillaume Adriansens put it simply: "The problem now is that we're running out of ammunition. Everyone wants a bicycle, but we don't have enough stock" .

Premium Models Disappear First

Perhaps most striking was the disappearance of high-end inventory. European consumers, flush with government subsidies, were not just buying entry-level models. Scooters and bicycles priced at $1,000-$1,600 (€900-€1,450) sold out rapidly -7.

"What we're seeing is a trading-up effect," explained Janobike's Li Xiaolong. "With government subsidies, low-end models are essentially half-price, but high-end models become available at what used to be the low-end price point. So now even the premium models are gone

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