Originally Posted by
FlashBazbo
Funny experience this weekend. In our area, I'm not sure any of us had ever seen an e-bike. But this weekend, a bunch of us traveled to a very nice organized ride through the Sequatchie Valley of Tennessee. GREAT place to ride.
One of the surprises was the number of e-bikes participating. Again, none of us had ever seen one in the wild, so it was a bit of a curiosity. No big deal. Not offended in any way. Just different. Until . . . one of our crew was having a rough day. We came up on one of the steeper climbs and he was having a hard time hanging with the group. A couple of us accelerated around a couple other bikes on the climb but, before the guy having a rough day could get around them, they accelerated away from him. It seemed effortless . . . and it blew his mind. As if he weren't having a hard enough time, this just buried him. He's not accustomed to being dropped on climbs. (He didn't realize they were on e-bikes.)
Eventually, about 10 miles later, he passed the e-bikes on a flat portion and realized they were e-bikes. He's no luddite, but after being dropped by them (thinking they were regular bikes), let's just say he didn't express appreciation for the type.
Again -- I'm not offended by people using e-bikes. But I was pretty surprised so many of them showed up for an organized metric+ bike ride. None of those riding them were geezers. In fact, most appeared to be in their 20's or early 30's. It definitely challenged my presuppositions about who uses e-bikes and how they use them.
Clearly the person in the story has ego issues or he would of been happy when he saw they were ebikes. I have owned an ebike for two years now and have gone on many group rides. Not with the A group. But I never wanted to ride with that group anyways. I live in Austin Texas and there are still many Lance want to be's here. If it makes them happy to ride like that they should go for.
The big issue I see in a lot of the reply's in this thread is they have no clue what a high-end ebike really is and what it can do.
First there are two main kinds of ebikes. Hub drives and torque sensing mid-drive. I own a torque sensing mid-drive.
You can get the same work out on a(some) torque sensing mid-drive as any other bike on the planet. I could plug it into a computer and set it where at a given power setting it was outputting just like any analog bike. That means if you have to use 250w to the ride at 20mph on the flat. I could set that it would take me 250w to ride the same 20mph on the flat.
But the choice would be up to me and that is the biggest difference between and analog and a torque sensing mid-drive. Choice. But a lot of people who have never ridden one don't understand that.
Over 90% of people who bad mouth ebikes are Guys over 40 who wear lycra. Never has a woman ever said a negative thing about my ebike to me nor has anyone under 40.
90% of those have never ridden an ebike nor do they really understand how they even work.
Analog bikes are like flip phones. They do only one thing. Ebike are like smart phones and can be set to do many things. First of all the analog bikes we see these days are part of the evolution of bikes. Ebikes are just the next step on that same path. 10yrs from now most people will be ridding one. Sure there will still be some dinosaurs riding analogs. But there will only be a few of them left. It is already happening in the mountain bike world. EMTB are taking over.
I ride and full suspension dual sport ebike that can keep up with any group of analog road bikes( for that matter I could pass any group if I wanted) one day and ride up and down the side of a mountain the next day if I wanted.
Just so some of you know. If your over 40 and wear lycra and tell someone on an ebike who is not in a race that they are cheating. You have an ego issue and you should take a good look in the mirror.