Originally Posted by Rob_E

It really seems like a subforum creates issues while addressing a non-existent problem. E-bikes have actually been around a while. They have their own section in the forums. How often does the touring section get "polluted" with ebike talk? If you ignore this thread where we all seem to be talking about talking about ebikes, rather than actually talking about e-bikes, the last one I remember was a thread started by someone who wanted to rant against the e-bikes. Not an actual e-bike rider asking for e-bike-specific advice, but one of the people arguing that e-bikes have no place in the touring forums (except, presumably, to mock them).

This is a non-issue. If you want to know how to get the longest life out of your battery or talk recharging strategies, of course you're going to be asking that in the e-bike forums. If you ask that here, you won't get many helpful responses, but you may get someone pointing out that there's a better place to ask the question. Just like in the many, many, many, many threads on airline travel (talk about a vehicle that fails in every way to meet the definition of "bicycle" and yet gets discussed all the time here), someone will point out that a folding bike can be employed to simplify air travel. But if you want to get to the specifics of what folding bikes work well for that, what bikes are compatible with which equipment, which bikes are most reliable, etc., you're going to end up in the Folding Bike section. And there may be more than a few threads about keeping your gadgets charged on tour, and after all the "purists" have chimed in with "helpful" comments about how they never deal with that issue because touring is about not having gadgets, some other people will chime in with actual experience and mention that if you want to dig deep on this topic, you should check out the Electronics and Lighting section. It's not that you're not allowed to discuss folding bikes or dynamo hubs in the touring section. It's just that there's better information elsewhere. But there's enough overlap that those issues can appear in multiple places. We don't need a Touring With a Folding Bike section or a Touring with Gadgets section because it simply creates a third, unnecessary place to ask your question. There's no reason that it wouldn't work the same with e-bikes. And I'd say that it does work the same, because even though we don't seem to be drowning in e-bike-specific topics, a number of forum users have mentioned in the course of this discussion that they use them. We haven't descended into chaos. Until this thread, anyway.