Electric Bike Crowdfunding Statistics! [KICKSTARTER and INDIEGOGO]

Electric bikes have become massively popular on crowdfunding sites like KICKSTARTER and INDIEGOGO. We've decided to put together statistics for all the electric bike projects listed, past and present.

Let's get into the numbers!

Statistic	KICKSTARTER	INDIEGOGO
Total Campaigns	110	46
Successful Campaigns (%)	50%	67%
Average Raised ($)	$183,738	$1,388,710
Average Base Price ($)	$1,436	$1,463

Here we see that although INDIEGOGO has fewer campaigns the average raise is much higher, though this number is slightly skewed up by the massively successful MATE-X which raised over $17 million.

The two averages shown are taken only over the successful campaigns. Interestingly, the average base price for the unsuccessful KICKSTARTER campaign is $1802, potentially signaling price sensitivity. The INDIEGOGO average is only slightly higher for unsuccessful campaigns at $1491.

Each project was categorized by bike type including: mountain, road, cruiser, folding, mini, gravel, chopper, cargo, and other. The cruiser category includes traditional beach cruisers and moped style bikes, while other consists of BMX, trike, and recumbent. Electric bike kits are excluded from the numbers. The results for successful campaigns are

showing that electric road, electric mountain, and folding electric bikes are favored. We also broke down the successful campaigns by motor type as either front hub-motor, rear hub-motor, or mid-drive. The results are

showing that most projects feature standard rear hub-motors. Although we showed the averages above, it is interesting to see the distribution of the total amounts raised and the base prices. The histograms for the total raised are

  where blue are the successful campaigns and red are the unsuccessful. The outlier INDIEGOGO campaigns MATE-X and Sonders are excluded which raised $17 million and $6 million respectively. Although INDIEGOGO has fewer campaigns there are many more which have raised greater than $1 million. The histograms for the base electric bike prices are


where once again blue are successful and red are the unsuccessful campaigns. Here we see that the bulk of the successful campaigns are centered somewhere around the $1000 price tag.

The last statistic we looked at is arguably the most important in determining whether a campaign will be successful or not: press mentions (or PR). We didn't actually scrape the internet for all the mentions though, we just counted the number cited on the campaign page.


The success rate for campaigns with no PR mentions was only 38%, while the rate for those containing at least 1 mention was 72%- quite an effect!

We also found that the average number of PR mentions for successful KICKSTARTER campaigns was 9.5 vs 13.6 for INDIEGOGO. This might help explain INDIEGOGO's surplus of large dollar value raises.

Conclusions

It appears from the data that projects utilizing rear-hub motors priced around $1000 tend to be most successful. Although KICKSTARTER has had more campaigns, the success rate on INDIEGOGO is higher. INDIEGOGO also tends to attract larger massively successful campaigns, with 11 raising over $1 million vs. only 2 over $1 million on KICKSTARTER.

One interesting observation is that some projects which appear similar to very successful campaigns in terms of offering and pricing have completely flopped, take for example DARRVIN. The data suggests PR mentions may play a role here, where it was found that by including at least 1 press mention the success rate jumped from 38% to 72%.

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What do you think, will you post on KICKSTARTER or INDIEGOGO for your next electric bike project?