Salsa e-Bikes - Bikepacking Options

[jabberwocky]

A bunch of bikes

Cool? All of those are probably great bikes. I'm not sure what your point is. Weight is not the be all end all even for normal bikes. Its even less important for an electric that has more than enough power to compensate for its weight. My Revolt with racks and bag and extender is pushing 50lbs. I notice it putting it on the bike rack or hanging it in the shop, but I don't notice it while riding.

And like half those bikes are low power bikes with small batteries, and most of them don't even have rack mounts. Totally fine, serves a market people want served, I just have no idea how they are relevant since its pretty obviously not what Salsa was going for. Are you under the impression that Salsa intended to make light nimble low assist bike and somehow screwed up and put a big motor and large battery in it? Or is it some sort of "this bike doesn't meet my wants and needs therefor it sucks and I must poop on it!" thing? Because its weird.

My Range Extenders cost around total $1,800. I bought the first one for the customary discount on my Vado SL. The other three were bought time after time, when I felt a need. It was not one chunk of the investment. Now, wanted I a Creo 2, I would have a big number of REs to re-use on the new e-bike.

I apologize for overestimating your expenditure on range extenders by 10%.

I'd say knowing their customer base Salsa wanted a large battery for long days in the mountains where gradients eat away battery quickly, echoing full power emtbs and with a similar weight as those. Lets see what riders make of them.

Yeah, its awesome to see someone making a real rough terrain, drop bar touring/bikepacking machine with a full power motor and big battery. Its been a little frustrating seeing the eMTB world moving to larger and larger batteries while the drop bar ebike world has been stuck in "500whr is enough!" land. People on drop bar ebikes like to do epic all day rides too! Carrying an extra main and extender on my Revolt got old like the month I bought that thing.

This seems so childish. Like Top trumps. "My brand is better then your brand". As you know I own a Specialized but I also own a Salsa. Both great bikes. I've owned Kona, Marin, KHS, Peugeot, MBK, Raleigh, Vitus, Mongoose and many more I can't even remember. Road bikes, Mtbs, BMX. Liked them all. All great, well built bikes. Thankfully we have choice and its fantastic we have smaller brands like Salsa that innovate & do their own thing. Looks like they are just dipping their toe in the e bike market and have sensibly gone for market leaders with Bosch and Mahle respectively.

Brand fanboyism is a scourge. Remember kids, brands do not care about you, theres no reason to do their marketing for them!

 

[jabberwocky]

Nice looking bike, which of course, is not brought into Australia .

I did forget that Giant has the Stormguard now, which probably gets disqualified due to being a flat bar bike with full suspension, but kinda approaches the design goals of the Tributary from the other direction. The Tributary is taking monstercross/gravel bikepacking to its extreme in offroad capability, while the Stormguard is kinda backing off the eMTB to make it more of a rough surface tourer. Sorta meeting in the middle. For what I like to ride, I'd go Tributary all day, but if your bikepacking is almost entirely singletrack the Stormguard is maybe interesting.

BTW I assume their claim of 50 km range is an error given that it is a 500 Wh battery.

Range estimates are usually wildly off. To their credit, Salsa points you to Bosch's range calculator. Using the recommended parameters and my weight, they give a range of 52 miles. I generally estimate 11.5-11.75whr/mile, which is 53-54 miles, so I'd say their range estimator is reasonably good.

 

[Stefan Mikes]

I did forget that Giant has the Stormguard now

 

[Stefan Mikes]

Are you under the impression that Salsa intended to make light nimble low assist bike and somehow screwed up and put a big motor and large battery in it?

I'm under Impression Salsa people were under influence when designing and approving the Tributary.

Cannondale could use the CX motor and make a 17.8 kg gravel e-bike. Salsa had the SX and screwed up everything from the start by installing a suspension fork.

Which only tells me Salsa are clueless at e-bikes. Same as Marin, by the way.

 

[jabberwocky]

I'm under Impression Salsa people were under influence when designing and approving the Tributary.

Cannondale could use the CX motor and make a 17.8 kg gravel e-bike. Salsa had the SX and screwed up everything from the start by installing a suspension fork.

FWIW the GRX version of the Tributary comes with a rigid fork. The sram version comes with a Rockshox 35 suspension fork. The Cannondale you're hyping up comes with a Lefty suspension fork in some versions as well. Suspension forks are reasonably mainstream in the gravel world. A lot of endurance gravel racers run them. Look up bikes from the Unbound XL race.

Its honestly nice that even the rigid fork version has a frame designed to accommodate a suspension fork if you wanted one in the future. Versatility is a good thing.

Also worth noting that the Topstone Neo 5 (same price, alu frame, rigid fork) is generally listed as 40lbs. Salsa says 46 for the GRX Tributary. 6 pounds isn't that much, especially when the Tributary has a larger battery and a much more capable setup in terms of racks mounts, tire clearance, rotor size and off road capability.

Which only tells me Salsa are clueless at e-bikes. Same as Marin, by the way.

Why?

 

[Stefan Mikes]

Why

Show me a nice looking Marin e-bike...

Regarding Cannondale, I only talked Topstone Neo Carbon Lefty 1 e-gravel bike. The Oliver Lefty is short travel and lightweight. With the full weight of the CX motor and a 500 Wh battery, the e-bike is pretty lightweight. Salsa could do better with the lightweight SX motor.

Specialized has the Future Shock 3.x in Creo 2, and the e-bike is carbon with wide tyres.

Salsa could do a way better work. Let us see if they can find a market for the Bosch e-bike.

 

[BlackHand]

Nice looking bike, which of course, is not brought into Australia .

BTW I assume their claim of 50 km range is an error given that it is a 500 Wh battery.

Niner has never updated the RLT e9 and I suspect they aren't producing new ones, but there are a few floating around still in the US. A few strange component choices on it but I probably would have pulled the trigger on one at some point if it used the same format powertube as my Haibike.

Regarding range - unlike most brands Niner seems to have posted a very conservative 'typical' range rather than the usual max range under low assist in optimal conditions. On my bike with the older Speed motor on "500wh" powertube, 34 miles is the default range for Tour mode. Climb a couple thousand feet or spend significant time over 20mph and you can easily dip under 30mi range. Keep in mind the 500wh is really about 481wh also.

 

[jabberwocky]

Show me a nice looking Marin e-bike...

Regarding Cannondale, I only talked Topstone Neo Carbon Lefty 1 e-gravel bike. The Oliver Lefty is short travel and lightweight. With the full weight of the CX motor and a 500 Wh battery, the e-bike is pretty lightweight. Salsa could do better with the lightweight SX motor.

Specialized has the Future Shock 3.x in Creo 2, and the e-bike is carbon with wide tyres.

Salsa could do a way better work. Let us see if they can find a market for the Bosch e-bike.

I'm not familiar with Marins ebike line. A quick perusal of their website shows a bunch of pretty normal looking ebikes. I don't see any drop bar bikes at all though, just eMTBs and various flat bar cruisers.

In any case, the argument here isn't that any of these other bikes are bad, its that the Salsa is doing something a bit different to target a different market. Salsas bread and butter is the bikepacking and endurance gravel crowd, so they are offering their take on something to appeal to them. I personally think its smart to push weight down the priority list and instead focus on capability and range. I mean, if you're going to bring a motor and battery along, why not attach them to a bike thats more capable than your regular gravel bike? Run larger, gripper tires. Slacken the head tube so you can bomb rough terrain more confidently. Bigger rotors for more stopping power! Bump up that battery for more range! Lots of mounts for bags, bottles, what have you. Its cool if thats not interesting to you, but I think theres definitely a market for that. I think another 500whr-bosch motor-exactly-the-same-as-their-non-electric-gravel-bike would be boring as hell, even if its 5lb lighter or whatever.

Personally, I have a non-electric gravel bike I like to ride. If I'm going out on the e-gravel its because I want to cover more ground and not worry about running bigger tires and packing more stuff. I've been waiting for someone to start porting over the larger batteries the emtb world has been getting to a gravel drop bar. My usual gravel routes are 30-50 miles, with occasional loops in the 50-70 range. 500whr gets me 43 miles so I need an extender/extra battery anyway. 625 is a big improvement because that gets me to 50 without an extender (so most of my routes are covered). 625 plus one extender gets me into the low 70s which covers almost everything. I like that it comes with proper shallow drop gravel bars (total personal preference but I hate narrow road drops on gravel). I like that they are speccing 180mm rotors on it (160 rotors are idiotic on an ebike IMO, I have 180s on my Giant and it was a pain in the ass to make that upgrade). I like that it includes a multitude of rack and bottle mounts (the trend of omitting these to make the bike look sleeker needs to DIE DIE DIE DIE). I bet its actually decently fun to ride on tamer singletrack, which is definitely not the case for my Motobecane or Giant.

In other words it ticks a lot of boxes for what I'd be looking for when I decided to upgrade the Revolt. I'm not totally sold; I'm wary of that 67 head angle and that 303mm BB height. Might be a little too off-roady for the type of riding I like to do. But a test ride may assuage my fears there.

 

[jabberwocky]

Niner has never updated the RLT e9 and I suspect they aren't producing new ones, but there are a few floating around still in the US. A few strange component choices on it but I probably would have pulled the trigger on one at some point if it used the same format powertube as my Haibike.

Regarding range - unlike most brands Niner seems to have posted a very conservative 'typical' range rather than the usual max range under low assist in optimal conditions. On my bike with the older Speed motor on "500wh" powertube, 34 miles is the default range for Tour mode. Climb a couple thousand feet or spend significant time over 20mph and you can easily dip under 30mi range. Keep in mind the 500wh is really about 481wh also.

Yeah, not sure if they are actually selling it anymore. Who knows. Niner has had their business struggles over the past several years (did bankruptcy in 2018 and were bought out by United Wheels, and went through downsizing and reorg last year). The RLT e9 is worth an update IMO, but no idea if they have the ability to do that now. I've actually had the idle thought a few times that they should do an electric version of the MCR9, but that would be a niche within a niche.

Giant also stopped selling the Revolt E (and Road E) in 2022 and they havn't returned (they actually have had no drop bar ebikes at all since then). My local shop said the Revolt E was a reasonably strong seller, not sure whats up there. Giant seems to be doing really well in the emtb realm but doesn't seem to know what to do with their road and gravel offerings.

My local gravel group has been seeing more ebikes lately so the popularity seems to be rising.

 

[Stefan Mikes]

the Salsa is doing something a bit different to target a different market.

I have shown the picture of the Tributary to an experienced adventure rider and he said:

'I would have never trusted a brand that even cannot set the drop bar angle properly for the marketing picture'.

 

[jabberwocky]

I have shown the picture of the Tributary to an experienced adventure rider and he said:

View attachment 172908

'I would have never trusted a brand that even cannot set the drop bar angle properly for the marketing picture'.

Hah. That’s actually how you setup the cowchippers. If you look at other salsa bikes that come with them (for example, the fargo) they are setup the same way. Side pictures exaggerate the backwards tilt because they have a pretty extreme sideways flair (like all shallow drop bars, so you can use the drops without banging your wrist on the top).

Pics of a bike with suspension but no weight on it are going to exaggerate that too. The front end is gonna drop ~1.5” with someone on it.

Yoh can assure your friend that Salsa knows how to set their bikes up better than he does.

 

[dblhelix]

LOL. "Salsa literally wrote the bike on gravel and bikepacking over the last 15 years, but it remains to be seen if they can handle buying motors from Bosch and attaching them to their bikes".

Salsa is a business which has read the same reports we all have: bicycle sales are abysmal while ebikes represent the only growth. This is their wheelhouse, so this is what they bolt the Bosch motor on.

I was out on the C&O canal (flat, dirt) and hit a detour up a very steep hill. The ground was wet and muddy. Even under dry conditions, the Bosch walk assist is traction-less on an incline. I decided I would completely strip my bike of gear and batteries and make two trips. Could not get the heavy ebike up that slippery mess. It would not have been a problem with my decade-old Fargo.

I've been stuck 2x in the middle of nowhere with an incapacitated bike. One occasion necessitated 6 miles of pushing to get to a bike shop that just shrugged "can't help you."

This isn't brand-specific. Not convinced that ebikes are the best option for this use case.

 

[jabberwocky]

Salsa is a business which has read the same reports we all have: bicycle sales are abysmal while ebikes represent the only growth. This is their wheelhouse, so this is what they bolt the Bosch motor on.

I was out on the C&O canal (flat, dirt) and hit a detour up a very steep hill. The ground was wet and muddy. Even under dry conditions, the Bosch walk assist is traction-less on an incline. I decided I would completely strip my bike of gear and batteries and make two trips. Could not get the heavy ebike up that slippery mess. It would not have been a problem with my decade-old Fargo.

I've been stuck 2x in the middle of nowhere with an incapacitated bike. One occasion necessitated 6 miles of pushing to get to a bike shop that just shrugged "can't help you."

This isn't brand-specific. Not convinced that ebikes are the best option for this use case.

Sure, but those concerns (bike being heavier, more complex and difficult to repair especially in the field) applies to pretty much all ebikes. eMTBs have always had the exact same concerns and are selling very well from what I can see.

Obviously, if the ride you're planning is within your abilities on a non-assisted bike thats probably your best option.

C&O is local to me and I've ridden it many times, though never on the ebike. Just too narrow crowded for my tastes. Even riding at 12-15mph I felt like I was doing some sort of inattentive walker slalom event. Detour was the bridge washout near Brunswick?

 

[Rás Cnoic]

I have shown the picture of the Tributary to an experienced adventure rider and he said:

View attachment 172908

'I would have never trusted a brand that even cannot set the drop bar angle properly for the marketing picture'.

I think you and your 'experienced adventure' friend think the Salsa is a straight forward e gravel bike, most of whom have road mimicking geometry with some tyre clearance consessions and mtb inspired 1 by gearing, (still frequently too high for decent hills). The Salsa is more akin to an emtb, a dropbar monstercross for long days off road touring. More akin for it's use actually to the SUV-like Tero range and of similar weight because of that full powered motor, front sus & large battery. Clearly the drop bars have confused you. It's not road inspired so doesn't need to be BDHU (Bars down hoods up) It mimics Salsa's own Fargo or Tumbleweed bikes like the Hardtack or Moonshiner or Stargazer or the Bombtrack Beyond or the Surly Grappler and many more - all 29er dropbar mountain bikes.

The flared bars are designed to sit at that angle!

It's a different category. Cairn in the UK came out with the BravE a couple of years ago with a similiar philosphy for long days off road with a big 650wh battery and chunky tyres - you can get it with flared dirt drops or flatbars:

 

[jabberwocky]

If you're used to traditional road drops, flared dirt drop bars look really weird. Especially in straight on views (side/front/top). But they make a lot of sense when you ride them. The drops are a lot more usable when they are up an inch or two and you aren't as horizontal using them.

Bikepacking has a really good comprehensive list of gravel bars. I run Ritchey Venturemax bars on my Revolt.

Stefan definitely has a roadie heart. He likes very light, very traditional looking ebikes with Specialized written on them somewhere. Nothing wrong with that, but its not surprising that the Confluence Tributary isn't his thing.

edit: wrong bike

 

[dblhelix]

Sure, but those concerns (bike being heavier, more complex and difficult to repair especially in the field) applies to pretty much all ebikes. eMTBs have always had the exact same concerns and are selling very well from what I can see.

Obviously, if the ride you're planning is within your abilities on a non-assisted bike thats probably your best option.

C&O is local to me and I've ridden it many times, though never on the ebike. Just too narrow crowded for my tastes. Even riding at 12-15mph I felt like I was doing some sort of inattentive walker slalom event. Detour was the bridge washout near Brunswick?

No, the dirt is relatively packed since the washout goes back to June 2018. This was a temporary detour maybe 8 miles before Williamsport.

The C&O is only super crowded the first 20 miles or so, and then again around Harper's Ferry for a bit. That leaves 150-160 miles of relative solitude. Besides, if you're westbound, it's the only realistic way out.

I see you're in Leesburg. I hate what's happened at White's Ferry.

EMTBs often have a vehicle nearby; less true for bikepacking.

 

[jabberwocky]

No, the dirt is relatively packed since the washout goes back to June 2018. This was a temporary detour maybe 8 miles before Williamsport.

The C&O is only super crowded the first 20 miles or so, and then again around Harper's Ferry for a bit. That leaves 150-160 miles of relative solitude. Besides, if you're westbound, it's the only realistic way out.

I rode it many times from Chain Bridge into DC back when I lived in Reston. Since moving to Leesburg I've parked at Point of Rocks and ridden both directions with the wife several times. I mean, its not, like, national mall packed but it was always fairly well used. I guess I'm spoiled from riding Loudoun Gravel where you can go miles without seeing anyone. Its also very narrow in places so passing people at anything above jogging paces feels reckless.

Some gravel friends like to drop into Brunswick from Loudoun (across the 287 bridge), drop down to the C&O, ride to Point of Rocks, recross at the 15 bridge and then immediately climb up Furnace Mountain Road back into Loudoun. I don't like either of those bridges on a bike though.

I see you're in Leesburg. I hate what's happened at White's Ferry.

Its unfortunate. I went through the lawsuit documents back when it first shut down and you really got the sense that the ferry owners felt like they could do whatever they want on the VA side of the river (which they didn't own and had a very limited easement to). When Kuhn bought the operation I assumed he would give the Rockland people their 50c a car or whatever and get things reopened but hes basically done everything except that. I feel like there has to be some agreement between him and the old owners that prohibits him from doing so, given its the one thing Rockland has consistently asked for and also the only thing hes refused to consider.

Back in my roadie days I would sometimes do road rides across the river (usually to Sugarloaf) and return via the ferry.

EMTBs often have a vehicle nearby; less true for bikepacking.

I mean, you're getting to the start point somehow. You probably get further from the vehicle while bikepacking, but I've done some long emtb rides on my Decoy and sometimes can be 15-20 miles from the car. If the bike broke down I'd have to call a support pickup, definitely not walking that back.

If you're in a really remote place you want to be able to rely on your bike. Where peoples comfort with their ebike lies is up to them. At least if the ebike part fails, you can still pedal it like a normal bike (not that I'm in any sort of hurry to do that).

 

[Stefan Mikes]

Weird. Why do you need a drop bar at all if it is totally out-of-place here?

The proper way.

Are you sure my mates are inexperienced?

 

[jabberwocky]

Weird. Why do you need a drop bar at all if it is totally out-of-place here?

Same basic idea as road bars (multiple hand positions to help with fatigue, ability to drop upper body for aero). Dirt/gravel drops usually are wider (better leverage on front end in rough terrain), have less reach (more upright body position) and the drops are shallower (so you can ride in the drops more easily). Shallow drops require some sort of flare so your wrists aren't against the top when you're riding in them.

There are a lot of variations on this theme (see the link earlier to see a visual comparison of many of them). The Cowchippers have a pretty large outsweep and flare. They are usually setup with a bit of up angle to them, especially if you ride in the drops a lot. As with all bike-fitting stuff, your mileage may vary. Some people do set them up with a flat bar/hood transition. My venturemax bars have similar flare but no outsweep and I have them set with the hoods pretty horizontal because thats what I'm used to.

The suspension Tributary photo exxagerates it somewhat since it comes with a 120mm fork, so assuming ~30% sag the front end will drop 36mm or so with a rider on it, which will flatten that out a little.

 

[jabberwocky]

Are you sure my mates are inexperienced?

Not an inexperienced cyclist, but likely not experienced with flared drop bars like the cowchippers, or drop bar bikes with front suspension.