Eurobike 2022: A haul of cargo goodies
Eurobike 2022: A haul of cargo goodies
Eurobike this year fell at a bit of a funny time, slap bang in the middle of the Tour de France. So Ronan, James and I had to drag ourselves away from the craziness of the three-week grand Tour and head to Frankfurt, the new home of Eurobike.
The new dates, 13th -16th July, sure had those of us who usually cover road cycling a little bemused; why would the industry throw Europe’s biggest bike show in the middle of the biggest bike race of the year? Couldn’t they keep it to early September, as it had been for years?
Well, we don’t rule the industry like we like to think we do. We’re not the segment of the industry that’s on the up; we’re not the part of the sport that’s innovating, evolving, and changing who rides and how they ride; we’re simply a tiny slice of the cycling community. The geeky, nerdy slice is dwarfed by the souped-up e-mobility portion in the pie chart with the header “cycling”.
My takeaway for the second year in a row at Eurobike is that the e-mobility market is one heck of a vibrant sector. And if traditional cycling brands don’t speed up development and investment, they will not just be left behind by up-and-coming brands honed to the e-mobility market but swamped by the multiple automotive brands seeing the potential that lies around the corner.
It’s an exciting time in the cycling world if you focus on e-mobility. Year-on-year, the show seems to throw up surprises at an alarming rate. Last year I pretty much spent the whole day in the only vibrant area of the show, the cargo hall. The more I delve into it, the more it entices me. It’s something we don’t usually cover here at CyclingTips. As I said, we’re the nerdy part of the sport; we’re the ones that wear lycra and shoes that make it hard work to waddle the short distance across a coffee shop floor, but it sure is something I want to delve into more.
So here we have it, a cycling-related video from July that doesn’t involve lightweight climbing wheels, 28mm tubeless tires, 3D-printed tri-bars or 8:1 profile tubing.
Oh, and if you do want to see some road goodies from this year’s Eurobike, then why not check out Ronan and James’ product picks from day one and two, or the goodies that tickled my fancy that weren’t designed for utilitarian use. Of course, we didn’t forget to hunt those bits out amongst the many cargo bikes and helmets with inbuilt indicators.
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