All Bicing bicycles in Barcelona will be electric next summer

BarcelonaFrom the summer of 2027, all Bicing bicycles will be electric. This is the goal of the action plan that the Barcelona City Council has in place, as reported by El País and confirmed by ARA. According to this improvement plan, the 3,000 mechanical bicycles that the Barcelona bike service still has will be replaced by electric bikes during the first half of next year. On the other hand, it is also planned to add 400 reserve bicycles to the fleet in order to improve response capacity when there are bikes in maintenance, incidents, or moments of high demand. These 400 new vehicles will be available by the end of the year.

All of this seeks to address evidence that users of this service already notice daily: the vast majority use electric bicycles, which often means the only bikes available at stations, especially during rush hour, are mechanical ones. In fact, according to data from the city council, 84% of Bicing trips are made with electric bikes, while currently, electric vehicles only represent 62% of the fleet.

Fine for repeated incidents

On the other hand, the City Council has also confirmed that it has sanctioned the Bicing concessionaire, UTE Pedalem, with 150,000 euros for service failures. The fine is related to the issues the service has been experiencing, such as problems with batteries, the application, lack of maintenance, or brake errors.

According to municipal data, this 2026 Bicing is expected to finish with 20.5 million trips, a "historic" record for the service. The council attributes this largely to the growth in the supply of electric bicycles. A figure that evidences the use made of this service is that on weekdays, electric bikes are used an average of 16 times.