Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 13:07:28 on Wed,
18 Jan 2017, Theo remarked:

She has a point about electric bikes though. In China, they're everywhere.
You can buy them in the supermarket for a few hundred dollars. Here,
they're sold by bijou little bike shops for near a thousand pounds. Or two
or three times that if you buy from a brand name or they manage to sell you
an electric mountain bike.

£5k from the shop below.

Even in Cambridge there is basically one shop

Rutland Cycling?

No, https://www.electricbikesales.co.uk/

dedicated to (expensive) electric bikes,

Most are about £1k-£2k.

Meanwhile, a down-to-earth retailer is about half to a third of that:
http://wooshbikes.co.uk/?sirocco

Peter Dawe is claiming he'll be selling electric bikes soon. I must pop
round and see if he has a demonstrator. "About £500 each" he says.

Sounds about right. A conversion kit in China is about $300.
https://bmsbattery.com/

Theo