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The real biggest problem with ebikes is that you suddenly have a sweet $3k+ mtb in your garage that gets used 3 times a year for shuttle or park days...
Actually, I lied, I really notice the weight when putting it on the bike rack, I need a spotter! damn bad shoulder!
I do find I push myself more on the regular bike now too. Once you experience the speed on flatter trails you want to try and go that fast on a regular bike.
Are there any other places that are facing similar issues.
I'll admit something on here, I ride my ebike 95% of the time now, my meta only comes out for shuttle days.
E-bikes have renewed my love of riding, I would always find excuses not to ride, with the eeb I'm chomping at the bit for that hour ride on my lunch break or riding somewhere I've never been and exploring new places. I can now ride with my buddies who are all extremely fit, this in-turn has progressed my skills as I'm riding trails I would never have done due to the ridiculous climbs.
As for the OP's question, I just ride the same pace as everyone else, put it in Eco mode and it's definitely a workout still.
Eebs are also a lot more accepted here in Australia than the USA it seems. Especially where I ride where all the trails are illegal anyway so there is no moral high ground for anyone.
tldr; I love ebikes.... I'm a fan.
I'm not anti-ebike. I rode with an out of shape buddy who was on one this morning. But that's their biggest downside until batteries get a lot better.
Point is JVP if you are fit you can get lot's of climbing in.
Also count me in the camp for having way more fun on my eeb. I ride it 9 out 10 times easy. 2300 off-road miles per year on mine.
First company to come up with a full powered (ie current 90NM torque) 1000W hours and <20kg will sell a billion of them, I think it's a few years off though however.
I can get about 55km and 1100m of vert (3600ft in bald eagle units) Thats on eco, so I'm pretty sore after that much riding. I'd like more but it's not a huge issue. I have a second battery if I'm looping back to the car.
I was recently on a bike trip out west (Breckenridge) and the black line bus driver to Peak 8 stopped midway up the hill to ask who had the e-bike? A woman raised her hand and the driver put her out on the street right there stating they are too heavy for the bike rack, although the driver had helped load it up!
The weight thing is bullshit, she ( the bus driver) just had a hard on for e-bikes. There were 2 other bikes on board that were heavier than the e-bike,
Still working our way past ignorance.
Riding with non-ebikes?
Take it out of turbo mode...
The power is a quickly wearing off gimmick (it was meh after about 15 minutes of turbo mode), they are heavier, much more expensive, require more expensive maintenance and they ride down hill much worse than proper bikes do.
If I'll ever want a motorcycle, I'll buy a proper motorcycle.
As for e-bikes, given my limited testing, Specialized SL series is the way to go - low power and light weight. That at least rides similarly to a bike and not like a train.
I ride single track in the midwest. This is probably the best use of these emtb's bikes. The handling is GREAT. A normal rider where I ride, the difference is night and day. There is no way a regular mtb can keep up...ain't happening. Until the battery dies...lol.
Maintenance wise, I have owned my bike for 9 months...I have ZERO cost other than plugging it in and of course a few minor upgrades like bars, grips, tires.
Comparing an emtb to a motorcycle makes zero sense.
Well, lucky, you, i've heard a lot of stories about chains wearing out in like 2 months, a cassette a season, etc.
Wasn't comparing it to a motorcycle, that's why I said if I wanted one, I'd do it proper, not by buying a half-way-there thing that I still have to pedal and that weighs 50 % more and is 50 % more expensive than the bike I have.
I'll stop here because I'm already looking like an internet asshole. And in the current world of acoustic vs. electric bikes there are plenty of those already.
And even if folk cannot agree on the benefits/downsides of EMTBs, can the MTB community agree to stop using the term "acoustic" when referring to bikes? It doesn't make any sense, and surely traditional non-electrified bikes have garnered enough respect over the years to simply continue to be referred to as "Mountain Bikes". The new kid on the block with the same name as the OG kid always has to take the nickname/added initial
Rode in CO last year and not all of the trails, but many of them were just very boring road climbs followed by a ripping one way extended downhill. To me, THAT'S where an e-bike makes sense. Would have loved to have rented an e-bike for those trails. My understanding is that those trails were temporarily made legal for e-bikes but due to issues, likely e-bikers going up 1 way descents, that trial period was ended.
Have also consistently noticed very new e-bikes for sale in Central TX. I suspect people buy them and then recognize that they are in fact not a good fit for our many bi-directional very short sighted flattish trails that have children/ hikers and so on also on the trails. That and it must be hard to really get the HR up.
Have only even heard about 1 e-biker on the 'good' trails from a friend, He said an e-biker was trying to go up a descent and when he told the e-biker that he was going the wrong way the e-biker removed his motocross helmet and declared 'that descent isn't possible...'
I'd be lying if I didn't say that when I'm riding the chunkiest bandit trails in the heat of a TX Summer that I don't fantasize about an e-bike. But not enough to buy one.
The fact that it would be easy to get away with breaking these laws is not a deciding factor for me. I choose not to endanger our trail access by taking a motorized vehicle on non-motorized vehicle trails.
But as an ex-MXer, with 20+ broken bones in my history and being 50 years old in 3 months I'd be all about them for the really tough trails if they were legal.
As for the price, an e-bike will _ALWAYS_ be heavier and more expensive than a normal bike. No matter what anyone says. Economies of scale cannot be a factor here, as the frames use the exact same technology to be manufactured, so you cannot save hundreds of dollars per frame of an e-bike compared to a standard bike to make an e-bike priced the same as a normal bike. At least not with the same components (or the same level of components). Not even with a 20 or 50-times volume difference (with e-bikes selling 50 samples for a single normal bike, which I do not see happening). Same goes for the weight, the fact you have additional components means an e-bike can not be as light as a normal bike at the same level.
eMTBs are there.
They're there on the ups and they're there on the downs. If your friend was in shape, he would've roasted you so hard he'd be challenging strangers on the internet. OP is right, it's actually really hard to tone down an eeb ride enough to ride with pure(ist) pedalers. Shimano's ECO mode will pedal away from everyone but 50bpm resting heartrate guys, tryhards on cross bikes, leaving intra-motor riders even more exhausted from the logistical related rate math problems of rendezvous here meet me there, i'll call you when I'm at the bottom of this here etcetera
I'm in similar cardio shape to when we last rode together, and I'm fairly certain I could do said lap twice in the time it took us to do one. I won't, because that sounds entirely too sweaty, but ease up: you're mis- or uninformed.
A decently fit climber with a 600Wh battery can get 5000 feet of vertical pretty easily, with much of that being in full assist mode.
So...which eMTB you gonna get?
Post a reply to: The HUGE downside of EMTB's