All about bicycles, electric-assisted bikes, technology and safety in the press

The most common safety risks that we come across in our daily work around bicycle safety, technology and operating instructions are also published by us in articles in the leading German special-interest magazines TOUR (Europe's road bike magazine no. 1), BIKE (Europe's mountain bike magazine no. 1), MYBIKE and EMTB in order to make this information, which is important for the industry, available to a wider public.

For many years now, the Eurobike Show Daily, trade fair magazine of the annual Eurobike Show, has also given us the opportunity to publish our view of major developments in the cycle industry in full-page articles.

We also speak regularly in independent expert presentations about all areas of bicycle technology and the bicycle market. In addition, we are quoted by further special-interest magazines of the industry and the trade as well as increasingly by radio and television in their media reports, which shows us that we are spot on with our advice. The section "News" informs you about the latest news from our specialist areas. The reports and publications of this section are listed chronologically or according to areas of interest.

SAZbike 12/2016
Reading time 1:00 minute

A chronicle of the e-bike tests performed by Stiftung Warentest

Four e-bike tests have been carried out by Stiftung Warentest, the German foundation for comparative product testing, since 2011. Every time they were followed by a fuss with bicycle manufacturers, associations and test institutes. Both sides are criticising each other again and again.

In August 2011 two bicycle models, i.e. the "E-Tour" by Pegasus and the "28" E-Bike" by Ruhrwerk were rated "inadequate" and failed. Three bicycles obtained the best mark and were rated "good". This was mainly to the benefit of Kreidler, as the test winner model "Vitality Elite" sold excellently afterwards. In these days already, the test conditions of Stiftung Warentest were criticised. In an interview with SAZbike of August 15, 2011, it had been criticised by bicycle expert Dirk Zedler already that the the product testers were impeding the progress and the safety of bicycles due to their non-transparency with regard to the test requirements.

Two years later, the next e-bikte test was published in June already. This test published with a striking announcement on the cover page with the title “E-bikes with risk”stirred up the cycle industry. In this test nine of 16 models were devaluated "inadequate". The poor result would show that the quality assurance of the manufacturers were apparently not able to keep pace with this development. This is was Dr. Holger Brackemann (Divisional Director Testing at Stiftung Warentest) made clear; in addition he pointed out that their demands were neither unrealistic nor exaggerated. Manufacturers, associations and test institutes of the cycle industry represented naturally another opinion. One critical comment in SAZbike of June 10, 2013 read the result of Stiftung Warentest are thoroughly questionable.

(…)

Author: Alexander Schmitz

Go back