antboy
Well-Known Member
Okay so do you think we should add another ebike class?
Call it a Class 0, equivalent of European/Japanese class of 250W, 15mph?
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Are Class 1 E-Bikes too Fast for Certain Trails? Some Think a Slower Class is Needed
With more than one type of electric mountain bike on the market today, some bikes might be more appropriate for certain trails than others.www.singletracks.com
For the kind of bikes/trails being discussed in the SingleTracks article, it's a ridiculous direction to go.
They're talking about Class 1 bikes, and Jeff Kendall-Weed's recent video sums up my opinion, and it's appropriately titled...
"Why are we so afraid of eMTB?"
Long and short of that video is the following:
Climbing steep technical terrain, there's about a 3mph gain in speed (from 5mph up to 8mph)
For less steep, smooth climbs, there's a bigger speed gain from about 7mph to 15mph.
Downhill is irrelevant, because gravity.
On flat trails, a pedal bike can already exceed the 20mph limitation of a Class 1 motor. It's hard, but people do it every day.
Class 0 isn't really going to affect either of the uphill speed increases and will make them go SLOWER than even a marginally fit person on smooth flats.
As the article points out...
Perhaps most tellingly, a 2017 county survey found 65% of trail users were unable to detect the presence of a Class 1 e-bike vs. a regular mountain bike, speed differential or not.
And this is in 2017, when batteries were obvious, compared today's in-frame batteries, on bikes that look more like traditional pedal bikes.
Earlier in the article:
His group has a master plan for developing 25 miles of singletrack on the property with trails designated for riders of all abilities.
With this in mind, and thinking about a Class 0, will all 25 miles of single track have an enforced speed limit of 15mph, including for pedal bikes?
When you look at it this way, it's ridiculous on its face.
As @jabberwocky said earlier, people going uphill on traditionally down routes (because the tech makes it conquerable), and people using Surron-esque electric dirt bikes are issues that wouldn't be solved by telling someone with an Orbea Rise that their bike is too dangerous to ride this single track.