I just go back from buying a few things at my local cycle shop. First time I’ve been there in four or five months, maybe. It’s a fair sized shop – they have maybe sixty or seventy adult bikes on display. I was just nosing around, as you do, taking a look at all the latest 2019 models, and it dawned on me that all of the mountain bikes I was looking at were, in fact, electric bikes. All told there were twenty five different electric bikes on display!
OK, so I didn’t do a count of all bikes on display, so I can’t give you the precise percentage, but I reckon a good third of the total were electric (ie, fitted with an electric motor as well as pedals). Whatever happened to, you know, just pedalling* these last few months? Is the same (disturbing) thing happening where you live?
Electric bikes are generally either for commuting or mountain biking. There’s a pretty big untapped market for both so that’s where new bike sales are being generated. There’s a fairly big debate in the mountain biking community about whether ebikes should be allowed on trails in certain areas, because the speed and trail use patterns of pedal vs electric are fairly different. If you exclude motorized transport (motorcycles) it’s a fine line between that and ebikes.
My wife and I have a total of 6 bikes, all pedal, but I could see adding an ebike for commuting. On the other hand, I’d rather get the exercise from biking to work since I need to get my exercise in anyway.
Don’t get me wrong - I can see there are reasons why someone might want/need an electric bike. But it’s the scale and the speed of the takeover that astonishes me. Last time I was in that shop, there were maybe three electric models on display; now they don’t just outnumber mountain bikes (which seems to be the target market), they overwhelm them; outnumber them by maybe two to one.
I was likewise pretty shocked - when the good e-bikes started appearing a couple of years back I genuinely thought wow - that’s a ton or R&D gone into something that will only be used by a tiny minority of people too poorly to cycle a normal mountain bike. :smack:
I guess no one ever lost money by taking something and lazifying it.
Still surprised they are selling like you indicate, though, as they are seriously expensive. 3 or 4 grand seems like entry level money if you’re talking a proper e-mountain bike.
As much as I dislike seeing them on the trails, cannot argue they are revolutionary for uplift riding. If you’re into downhill or enduro they have totally changed the game - I only dabble in a bit of that, if I was more into it I think an e-bike would be mandatory really, as you would get better so much faster. Probably triple the runs you could do on a ride.
Not everybody has the time or facilities to take a shower when they arrive at work, hence the popular folding electric bicycle. The one I tried once, while it did have pedals installed, they would not normally be used unless you were out of charge; the motor was controlled just like the throttle on a motorcycle.
You could install an electric motor on a mountain bike (or any bike), but those battery packs are heavy and bulky, plus imagine lugging around an electronics kit in addition to your usual repair tools.
They are starting to become popular around here. We have the American River Bike Trail - 32 miles of paved, off-street, trail bisecting the Sacramento area, with miles of lateral and other paved trails. Not only are e-bikes sold in traditional bike shops around here, but there are shops that ONLY sell them. Evidently, they have tapped into a market previously unexplored, and I suspect in more urban areas like SF they are even more popular.
They are sort-of looked at with mile annoyance thru open hostility on the ARBT, where they ARE allowed. The worry is the lazy will not be able to handle the machine around corners and crash into other trail users. I have not heard of this happening, so I think a lot of the anxiety is that old duffers will be passing the fitness dudes and gleefully shouting “On your left!!”
They don’t bother me so much, tho. If it gets people out of their cars, and using a trail I use, then a good portion of them will also care about the trail as well.
Friend of mine (really strong rider) did this on one of his mountain bikes - 4 or 5 hundred quid motor and battery off aliexpress, and it looked the absolute bollox for about 2 weeks. He was knocking out massive rides - like 75 miles proper off road with 10000+ feet of climbing, before he stripped one of the internal gears and it broke. I think for a commuter, though, this would work fine as there’d be nothing like the stress on it.
I see lots of commuters using e-bikes and understand the reasoning mentioned above, especially riding in work clothes without getting sweaty. And anything that gets people out of cars in the city is fine by me, although scooters currently have some issues. (They go far too fast; even fit bike riders go slower because cars.)
But e-mountain bikes is a baffling new one on me. Perhaps aging long-time riders still want to hit the trails but don’t have the strength they used to.
I commuted with one for a year or so around 2014. It was a pretty early model that was extremely heavy (really couldn’t pedal it unassisted) and the rear tire really needed someone in the shop with a lot more skill than I had to take off. It had a hand throttle and you could pedal as much or as little as you wanted. My knees couldn’t handle the hills to work and back. I really liked it except for the bad, cold rainy days. I got to ride again, it was a lot of fun, average speed versus heavy commute time was just a bit slower, got in at least light exercise every day, and I didn’t need a shower at work or home.
The bicyclists I ran into at stop lights were kinda split. A good chunk thought that riding a bike was good, then there was another group that thought it was “cheating”. There were also plenty that didn’t realize it was an electric bike, would blow past me downhill on skinny tires and then WTF when I blew by them uphill.
The mountain bike piece seemed to be big in Switzerland 5 years ago or so. There was a whole network/route where you could swap out for a charged battery at stops along the way. This allows people not in great biking shape the ability to cover a lot of ground in the mountains that they probably otherwise wouldn’t even think to attempt.
I wonder if people who are buying electric mountain bikes want something that they can ride to work to and go off-road with. Or maybe they’d like to bike to the closest trail from home, but don’t want to wear themselves out getting there.
There are different kinds of mountain bikes, and different kinds of mountain bikers. I think a battery boost would be awesome for downhill, for example, err, rather, for first getting up the hill. Downhill bikes have excellent geometry and suspensions for taking all of the hits and performing all of the maneuvering you need for a fun downhill run. Getting up the hill is challenging with such a geometry, though, and when the type of biking you’re doing is decidedly downhill – not cross-country – getting up is just a hassle. A few years ago, I made sure that part of my trip to Queenstown included a Skyline pass: the entire point was to ride the cable car to the top of the mountain with a downhill bike. It was incredible. Imagine how excellent it would be to participate in other downhill courses where there’s not enough infrastructure demand to build a cable car.
I’m not a downhill freak, and my MTB is a cross-country bike. In this case, the entire point is to have fun in the woods, going up and down. Sometimes there are hills I have to walk up, but I’ll damned if I’m going to use a battery to “cheat”; I won’t condemn others, but for pure cross country, I let my pride get in the way.
The trend now is ski areas having downhill mountain bike trails and using the chairlift infrastructure already in place. We go a few times a year and it’s really a blast.
I don’t see myself ever buying an ebike either, but I say that while I’m still capable of biking up those hills. I’m in my mid-50s, not sure how much longer I can still do all that I enjoy, someday I may want to try them. My XC bike gets me up and down most everything I’m comfortable riding. We’ve tried dedicated downhill bikes for ski areas and they really do handle the speed and jumps better, but not so much that we want to drop another 5 grand on new bikes. We rent for the 2-3 days a year we need them.
The up-hill portion of mtn biking can be a serious grind. The beginning of the season is horrifying (even with me riding my bike on a trainer all winter) and by the end of the season, it has improved to mid-sucking range. I’m nearly 50 and see the allure of a little help up the hill. I have test ridden a pedal assist bike (not on a trail) and it was pretty amazing. I still got a good workout, I just went a lot faster up the hills.
I think one of the most interesting aspects to an e-mtn bike is the use on the growing number of rail-to-trails that are not paved (I loved the paved ones but fly along them on my road bike). We have a few in my area such as:
Once you get your bike loaded down with camping gear and food, it can be tough to cover much ground. A little e-boost could be real helpful. Get some of the towns along the way to provide recharging and you could have a great adventure that’s further than you would normally be able to do.
Here in Texas, they’ve taken a chair lift from a place that has snow, and moved it here just for mountain biking. It just opened about a month ago, and I’m planning to go.
I can understand that some mountain bikers don’t want an electric bike - I’m one of those myself. But I don’t really understand people who want them banned from trails. Someone posted upthread that there’s little difference between a motorcycle and an electric bike, but the reason motorcycles are banned from MTB tails is that motorcycles are heavy and powerful enough to spin the tires, therefore they tear up the trail. Those concerns don’t apply to e-bikes.
This past summer I did a mountain biking trip to Crested Butte, Colorado, and I have to say that some assist would have been nice. I’m a 57-year-old lowlander who’s in decent shape but not an elite rider, and those climbs were brutal.
As ebikes get more powerful I do think you’re going to see them capable of tearing up the trails. If some power is good, more power is better, unfortunately.
But I think the bigger problem is that access to some fairly remote or difficult trails is limited by the effort required. If you remove that limitation, the remote trails that survive today due to limited use will become overused and deteriorate. Right now there are places I like to ride where you seldom see other people but because it’s so difficult to get there and back. There’s little congestion and the trails don’t require significant maintenance. If everyone can ride those trails repeatedly then the experience of getting far off the grid is lost and the trail quality will suffer. It’s a selfish argument, but do think is has some merit.
An analogy seen in backcountry skiing is that there are places that require you to skin up to the terrain, and most people only get 1 or 2 runs a day. But you can get away from it all and have it mostly to yourself. But if someone starts using snowmobiles, snowcats, helicopters, or if a ski area expands into it then the experience is completely changed. More people get to experience it, but it’s not the same thing. To many (most?) people the difference is negligible, they aren’t looking for solitude. But to the few who pioneered that locale the experience is gone.
Huh. Cynic that I am I presumed the huge number on display had more to do with the profit margin (and absolute amount) than anything else. A bike store wants to create the demand for what makes them the most money.