The general thought is that buying an electric delivery bike is more economical than leasing. However, in practice, the opposite turns out to be true.
Buy electric delivery bike
Indeed, besides the usual purchase cost of the electric delivery bike including personalised accessories such as rack, delivery box(es) and stickers, a number of direct and indirect costs are often not taken into account.
Think of direct costs as regular maintenance, unexpected repairs and insurance against damage and theft. The indirect costs are most often forgotten and underestimated: these are the costs due to lost turnover due to downtime of the bike. All these costs added together make an electric delivery bike cost €17,295 over three years. See a breakdown of these costs in the table below, more explanation is given in the blog: 'what does a delivery bike cost?'.
Leasing a delivery bike
Then the cost of leasing a electric delivery bike. These logically consist of the number of instalments multiplied by the monthly lease amount. It is often thought that paying in instalments versus buying a vehicle once is the biggest and only advantage of leasing. However, this is not the case. In fact, the advantage of leasing lies mainly in the mobility guarantee that comes with it.
In short, by performing preventive maintenance on the bicycle and repairing it quickly (within 24 hours) in case of unexpected repairs, one guarantees that a bicycle will not stand still. This minimises a major indirect cost item, namely loss of turnover due to downtime (€200 per day). In total, about €1,200 over 3 years.
And that is what makes leasing especially more financially attractive than buying an electric delivery bike. As shown in the table below, assuming an average lease amount of €125, leasing an electric delivery bike costs €5,700 per month over three years.
Full service
Thus, the biggest advantage to entering into a lease contract is mobility guarantee which minimises the cost of lost sales due to downtime. In addition, convenience and unburdening is also a reason for an entrepreneur to opt for leasing. After all, maintenance and repairs are carried out by a party that quickly (and often on location) takes care of repairing and maintaining the bike. In addition, leasing also offers an advantage in terms of insurance. After all, it is virtually impossible for an individual entrepreneur to get electric delivery bikes insured. And if they can, the monthly premium is considerable.
It can therefore be concluded that leasing has many more advantages than just low monthly payments. Leasing offers mobility guarantee that leads to lower costs, unburdens and makes insurance affordable. Compared to buying an electric delivery bike is leasing is 3x cheaper than buying.
Are you an entrepreneur looking for an electric delivery bike? Then always choose a party that leases full service offers. Then, as an entrepreneur, you can focus on the most important thing of all: getting meals from A to B as quickly and as warmly as possible. That's what it's all about!
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