October 29, 2013 – Bicycle sales have outpaced new passenger car sales across almost all of Europe reports the American broadcaster, National Public Radio. Data was examined from 25 out of 27 member states of the European Union for 2012 (Cyprus and Malta were excluded from the study because of incomplete data).

The largest single market for bicycles in Europe was in Germany where nearly 4 million bicycles were sold last year compared to 3.1 million cars. The United Kingdom was second with 3.6 million bikes sold versus some 2 million cars.  France was third, seeing 2.8 million bikes sold versus 1.9 million cars. Perhaps the recent TdF wins by British riders (Wiggins, 2012; Froome, 2013) including their domination on the track have boosted the popularity of cycling in the U.K., a country not traditionally associated with cycling.

The ratio of bikes-to-cars sold exceeded a high of 10-to-1 in the Baltic state of Lithuania where 115 million bikes were sold versus only 12 million cars. The situation in Greece is also dramatic where 320 million bikes were sold versus 56 million cars.

The study’s authors suggest that economic reasons are largely behind this trend; car sales hit a 20-year low in Europe. This explanation makes sense for countries like Greece, hit by drastic austerity measures and for Italy and Spain that were hard hit by the recession, but less so for Germany. And the authors also notice that the younger generation is not terribly interested in buying cars in North America, even where the economy is strong.

Ironically, the only two countries in Europe where car sales exceeded those of bicycles in 2012 were in Belgium and Luxemburg, two nations that have very much embraced bicycle culture. This may be due to “bicycle saturation” in those countries.

The study reported only on unit sales, not dollar values.

National Public Radio article here.