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Maybe I’m just being a little cynical, but this does feel a little like the early stages of e-mtbs morphing into something that’s closer to an e-motorbike by the back door. Yes, I know you’re still pedalling rather than twisting a throttle grip, but at what point do e-mtbs stop being about having practical assistance for climbing and start being about the thrilling acceleration of the motor?

And if this is the new benchmark motor, how long before someone comes up with a new one that’s stronger and torquier. And what, if anything, does that mean for trail erosion and interactions with other – non e-bikers – in the outdoors?

While I’m being curious, do more powerful motors mean more stress on them and potential reduction in reliability?

The mountain bike press seems unconcerned about any of this stuff, preferring to go on a pant-wetting, breathless fan-boy trip about how fast the new motors feel rather than looking beyond that at either the overall bike package or the wider implications of some sort of e-mtb arms race.

Fwiw, I thjnk e-mtbs are great, but I’m not overly convinced that making them more powerful makes them ‘better’ where it matters.

Lighter? Yes. More Range? Yes. More Torque? Not needed.

This is what’ll get me more interested in an e-bike. The way you see people tear arsing up climbs today doesn’t make me think you’d want anything to do that faster or cope with even steeper climbs. Get weights down and ranges up and that’ll get me interested more than Jeremy Clarkson-esque shouting of “POWER” because then as BWD says, you’re heading towards eMX bikes where tiny amounts of pedal input are resulting in a massive production of e-power. May as well just not bother with the spinning pedals bit anymore and just press a button/throttle.

While I’m being curious, do more powerful motors mean more stress on them and potential reduction in reliability

I’d be more concerned about the durability of drivetrains (chain, cassette, rear mech)  that were designed for human power output having to cope with maybe 4 times the load from an electric motor.

what, if anything, does that mean for trail erosion and interactions with other – non e-bikers – in the outdoors?

I thought the trail erosion thing was in fact not a thing? From the study abstract: Results from the field experiment show that, under this set of conditions, soil displacement and tread disturbance from Class 1 eMTBs1 and traditional mountain bikes were not significantly different, and both were much less than those associated with a gasoline-powered motorcycle. Granted it’s 2015, but I don’t know a more recent one.

As for interaction, personally IRL, I’ve yet to have an encounter with an e-bike rider that wasn’t the same as any other interaction I’ve had with any other MTBer. The only observation (purely anecdotally) I’ve got is that in some places, E-bikes are now the majority of bikes.

Sharp climbs to cut off tricky corners particularly.

Yeah, that’s fair, in places they do change lines agreed, the report only talks about erosion of existing trails not cutting in new lines. I have noticed that e-bikes now allow access to places that, on normal bikes are a bit of a hard climb or otherwise out of the way, are now getting more traffic becasue you don’t have to put in the work to get there. But that may also be partly the effect of SM or YouTube videos? Dunno

Also on an e-bike you can go and ride 1000m+ of climbing or descending in an hour or two and feel fresh as the end of it. That would have been an all day ride on an unpowered bike and left most people pretty exhausted. I reckon e bikes double the distance/number of trails a lot of people are riding each time they go out.

I don’t buy that argument at all.

I regularly do that kind of ride day after day on my manual bike. (200,000+ meters last year)

I ride my manual bike a lot more than my Ebike so I cause less damage on the EEBer than under my own steam.

There are loads of folks out there doing the same as me.

Back on topic.

I’m another that would go out and buy a new Ebike if it was proven to be a lot more reliable than they are at the moment.

More power/less weight  won’t get me rushing to buy in to an unproven motor.

I don’t buy that argument at all.

I regularly do that kind of ride day after day on my manual bike. (200,000+ meters last year)

not everyone is like you. There are a lot of “time limited” riders. Weekday night ride for a few hours and Sunday morning, back with the family for Sunday lunch. They’re putting a lot more mileage and climbing in on an e bike than they were before. The whole point of them for a fair few people is to “shuttle” trails in a way you just couldn’t before.

The point being you can’t blame Ebikes  for wearing trails out any more than you can people like me.

No, but if 100 singlespeedstus stared visiting an area every weekend where they weren’t before then you might see an increase in trail wear. The difference is 100+ ebikers are visiting local riding spots every weekend. I’m happy to see more people riding, and the solution is more trails, which is also good, lets hope that happens.

In my very minimal sample of a couple of people I’ve seen, the ebikes just went straight through the filth where as the normal bikes went round it so I guess in that case trails got deeper not wider… 6 of one, half dozen of the other.