Previously to CIE 2024 Summit, on October 1, CIE Members gathered for an exclusive event to talk about the latest policy and market insights, key developments with the new EU administration, enjoyed expert group meetings and a networking dinner.
This is what we would like you to remember!
CIE launches two new Expert Groups
During the Members’ Day we were excited to announce the launch of two new expert groups: Leasing and CIE Women In Cycling.
Leasing is not only a key driver in the transition to sustainable mobility but is also becoming a key driver for growth for the entire bike industry. The timing is politically perfect as leasing is part of the EU’s two key documents: European Declaration on Cycling and Mobility Transition Pathway. It also fits well with the objectives of the €85 billion Social Climate Fund, for which member states are currently drafting their national plans.
The Expert Group will bring together companies to:
Provide a concerted lobby group towards the EU institutions, aiming for the EU level to increase the importance of leasing with member states.
To deliver EU level recommendations on key policy enablers for bicycle financial, insurance and leasing services.
Identify and share best practices in fiscal and employment law to facilitate the growth of bike leasing services and promote these best practices at EU level.
Advocate for the EU to allocate research and innovation funding to make fiscal measures more ready for market in diverse tax and fiscal regimes.
Create position papers, reports, events, networking, alliances and promotion towards the EU and national bodies. Give technical advice on how to redeploy successful measures in new countries.
The Expert Group will kick off this autumn, and we now open it for expressions of interest. If you are interested in joining, please contact our Policy Director Lauha Fried.
CIE Women in Cycling was created to address diversity in the cycling industry. Following our Members' Day session, it became clear that CIE has a vital role in driving systemic change with the help of our member companies.
The group will work closely together with the European and national WIC initiatives, which are rapidly expanding and already exist in France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and Women in Mountain Biking.
The group will focus on enhancing structural change but also work on individual level supporting women working in the industry. The scope and priorities will be discussed at an online kick off meeting taking place on 21 October at 3pm CET - Interested in joining? Please contact us. We welcome both women and men to join this group to help us to shape the sector forward!
Strengthening collaboration on common challenges
If the cycling sector as a whole is to thrive in the next five years it will be because established businesses increasingly partner with new entrants who bring expertise in digitalization, supply chains, sustainability and product development. So said outgoing CEO Kevin Mayne in his reflective commentary on the evolution of the sector over the past ten years.
And CIE is the role model for this ecosystem thinking, with Members’ Day showcasing the increasing connections between companies in the organisation, working together on common challenges such as product passports and market forecasting. Large multinationals are pairing with startups and technology providers inside CIE’s structures to design and pilot initiatives for the benefit of the whole sector. Supplementing existing initiatives a new expert group on leasing was announced, bringing more even more expertise from fiscal and retail sectors into the community.
Frequently mentioned as a case study was the success of CIE’s Bike Sharing Expert Group, whose groundbreaking benchmarking reports using standardized data have created an EU wide picture of the state of shared cycling. If this approach to data could be repeated in the supply chain side of the ecosystem forecasting, supply chains and traceability could be revolutionized.
If the afternoon’s expert group and technical meetings were an example, it is clear that CIE members are already totally in agreement - “Smart works with smart”
The Mobility Data Space and its Impact on the Cycling Industry
During the joint session between CIE's Market Impact & Intelligence and ITS Expert Groups, we explored the Mobility Data Space, drawing insights from the MegaBITS project with a presentation by project partner imec. Discussions sparked strong interest and some apprehension as members weighed the potential impact on their businesses. They saw benefits like increased efficiency and better data accessibility for decision-making and strategic planning. However, concerns surfaced around ensuring data quality (e.g., representativity) and how increased data accessibility and visibility might affect long-term business models. With data spaces gaining momentum, increasing focus in this area would be of real value for the industry
‘Digital native’ innovators and digitalization can deliver much-needed solutions
With data and digitalization featuring prominently in discussions across the day, CIE member companies offering digital solutions for the cycling industry had a fantastic opportunity to network and showcase their services. There is clearly a rapidly growing number of companies developing data and IT-driven services to support industrial operations, better urban mobility, fleet management or user registrations, to name but a few areas in which these up-and-coming companies operate.
A one-off session on preparing and implementing future ‘product passport’ requirements – which will become a regulatory obligation for e-bike batteries in February 2027 – showed how manufacturers and distributors can accelerate their digitalization process with a methodology to efficiently gather product passport data, first internally, and then with industrial partners across the supply chain. Service providers would have a key role in providing the digital architecture to exchange information across the supply chain in a reliable, timely and compliant manner.
The Cycling Innovation Network session shined a spotlight on the areas in which digital companies are operating to provide clarity regarding what data-driven companies are offering, whether this is mobility data, industrial data, market data or data generated via intelligent transport system applications or equipment.
Finally, how better data and a global digital identification scheme for bikes could unlock new sources of revenue for cycling companies was in focus during the Market Impact & Intelligence and Intelligent Transport System session, amidst broader discussions on the value of data and the key gaps the industry needs to address to complete its data picture.
CIE Members' Day Photos:
Look at the CIE 2024 Members' Day pictures here
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