Hello everybody, thank you for accepting me in this community, nice to be here. I need an eMTB in my life and I was hoping you could advise me on what to buy. I live in a mountain forest area with endless steepy trails full of rocks and fallen branches, but also with long, cozy service roads for the fire brigade. I love technical riding and I had tried all kinds of offroad motorcycles, but I kept none of them cause I am a female and these bikes are just all too tall and heavy for me. I also bought a trials bike but it was uncomfortable to ride on trails even with a seat attached because of its geometry. I do have a very cool all mountain bicycle but on steep ascents I have to push it or I move with the speed of a turtle, so I only ride it on specific paths. Anyway, I need an ebike with as much battery as possible to be able to explore even unknown areas for me and ride around for 3 hours. At the same time I want to keep the feeling that I am actually riding a bicycle and enjoy pedaling to get some exercise and feel that I am moving the bicycle myself, at least partly. I explored the option of turning my own MTB to an ebike with a Bafang M620 and a 52V21Amp battery, but it is impossible to place the battery on the frame and I will not carry it on my back. I asked around about mainstream ebikes (with Shimano, Bosch, etc motors at 80nm torque) and according to what I have been reading they just seem too weak for what I want them to do, so I am definetely looking at Bafang 1000W - either by bying an allmountain bike that the battery is easy to fit on and doing the coversion myself (with the BBSHD probably), or by buying a bike with the M620 already fit on. Now, I live in Europe so I can forget about importing parts or bikes from China or USA, because of EU antidumping measures. There are a very few bike manufacturers in Europe with the Bafang M620, they offer it with a 650Wh battery (not that huge) but the bikes look awesome and are light and agile, about 25 kg or 55 pounds. I also found some heavy bikes in Eurpe with M620 at around 34 kg or 75 pounds that will ride for ever because the battery is huge (they have a special frame to accomodate it), but this means they are quite heavy and I am not sure if they will still feel like a bicycle or rather as a lightweight electric enduro motorcycle, or like something that is neither a bicycle, nor a motorcycle. The problem is, these toys cost a fortune, like I really have to save money to buy them, and I can't just keep them all or try them all and decide, and they are not even around the place, like they will be shipped from another country and once I have made my decision and placed the order I can't take it back. So based on this info (and thank you for reading so far
), what would you suggest I should buy? When does a bicycle stop being a bicycle and becomes an electric motorcycle? And for those of you that have ebikes, especially heavy and powerful ones, do you still enjoy pedaling and getting a good exercise if you adjust the power of pedal assist? Thank you so much!