Cargo bike for delivery? Sounds familiar to me

I used to shop a lot online when I was living in China, sometimes as frequent as several times a week. Why not? We have Taobao (Chinese equivalent of eBay where you can find anything you want), Dangdang (for books), JD (Chinese equivalent of Amazon, for people who don’t want to spend time comparing thousands of sellers on Taobao). And the best thing is delivery is mostly free. Even if it’s not, 1 pound should be enough to cover even the remote areas in China.

A couple of months ago when I was at home, I again ordered a lot online, including a desktop computer for my parents, a 29 inch suitcase, a Chinese chopping knife, a massage cushion and many others. One thing I noticed is no matter which delivery company handles the job, the delivery guy always comes in an electric cargo trike, which looks like this:

I’m sure they’ve been operating like this for a long time (electric trike has a long history in China and is still used in some places as informal taxi) but I just never paid much attention to it before. I also noticed that several delivery companies have setup offices in our neighbourhood and they just conveniently double as local sorting offices (actual operation is done on the pedestrian outside). So the delivery guy doesn’t have to carry too many parcels nor does he have to travel far. The electric cargo trike works perfectly fine for him. 

What made me remember these trikes is a case study in a CIVITAS webinar where a presenter from cyclelogistics discussed using cargo bikes and tricycles for last-mile delivery, the different bike options and their pros and cons. While I do like bikes and also agree it offers many benefits to use bikes/trikes for delivery, I can’t help thinking this is nothing new. In UK, bicycles have been used for postal deliveries since the 1880s and only phased out in 2010 for health and safety concerns. This reminds me of an example on tram in Sydney Dan Hill gave in his talk. The city had a fluid tram system which was closed in 1961. Now decades later they want it back. Almost like a fashion cycle. 

Also there’s a huge price difference between an European cargo trike and a Chinese one. According to the study of cyclelogistics, an European cargo trike costs between €3,000 to €12,000. 

And a quick search on Taobao shows that a Chinese electric cargo trike may only cost around €500 (with a backup battery it costs RMB 4600 which is roughly €550). If we’re talking about a reputable manufacturer with higher quality standard it might be a bit more expensive. But then a non-electric version should be a lot cheaper. 

It’s probably not fair to compare a bike made in Europe with one made in China given the difference in labour cost. However, if a made-in-UK brompton bike costs roughly £750. I don’t see why a cargo tribe has to cost more than three times as much. 

Back to China, it seems that a national standard on electric cargo trike specifically for deliveries will go live in this September, and Henan province (where my hometown is) is trying to grab the opportunity to produce the first batch trikes complying to the standard. The national standard is indeed much needed. We’ll see how it develops.