By Abe Becker
Monday, 07 May 2012
Phnom Penh Post
Electric motorbikes on display and for sale at a shop in Phnom Penh yesterday. Photograph: Phnom Penh Post/Meng Kimlong
Battery-powered scooters are capturing an increasing share of the Asia
Pacific’s two-wheeled transport market, according to a recent study, but
scooter retailers in Phnom Penh yesterday said Cambodians still opt for
the petrol-burning version.
By 2018, about 65.5 million electric scooters worth some US$382 million will be sold in the region, Pike Research, a green technologies market research firm, said in a recent report.
“Growing
economic prosperity is creating a greater number of middle- and
high-income level consumers, which in turn is contributing to the growth
of the electric two-wheel vehicle market in the region,” Andy Bae, a
senior analyst at Pike Research, said in the report.
Cambodia’s role in the trend is unclear, and people in the industry said sales for electronic bikes were low.
Chhai,
a mechanic working at one of Phnom Penh’s electric scooter shops,
reported that his company has sold two-wheeled vehicles for close to 15
years.
The best sales years were 2008 and 2009, he said.
“In
2008 and 2009, we were selling somewhere between 30 and 50 electric
bikes and a similar number of electric scooters each year, but now we
only manage to sell 10 to 15 of each a year,” Chhai said, declining to
give his full name.
The reason for the drop in popularity, Chhai said, may have been because of the lack of spare parts in circulation.
The
shop now has a full stock of spare parts available, and Chhai said he’s
confident that the popularity of electric vehicles will increase over
time.
“The technology is improving, the batteries are breaking
less, lasting longer and storing more electricity with each year. I
think that in the future there will be many more electric bikes in the
Kingdom because of improving technology,” he said.
Locating an electric scooter shop in the country’s capital can be difficult, Sopeak, at Sam Bath Motocycle, said.
“We don’t sell them because they are difficult to sell. They are much too expensive.”
Hok
Y of Japan Motorcycles said they don’t sell them because their target
market is high-performance motorbikes and the shop feels that the
performance of the electronic version is too low.
Some drivers asked about the prospect of the scooters yesterday said the bikes were “silly”.
Many
of the electric vehicles on sale are imported from China, and a
brand-new electric scooter costs about $400. They can travel anywhere
between 30 and 100 kilometres when fully charged. Depending on the
model, the bikes take two to eight hours to reach full power capacity.
To contact the reporter on this story: Abe Becker at newsroom@phnompenhpost.com
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