In this episode of the Singletrack Podcast we have a Mrs Merton-style ‘heated debate’ about eeb numbers.
Benji and Mark layout the Singletrack Magazine editorial team’s concerns around peak power for the latest wave of eMTB motors and firmwares. We (well, Benji) also bangs on (and on) about how Trail Bikes should just get in the sea.
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You can listen to the whole 42 minute thang below…
A few comments …..
Benji sounds muffled, got a cold? bad mic setup?
50+% of human communication is about body language/facial expression, a lot more work I would assume but a video podcast is much better.
If you are talking numbers have them in front of you, quite a few “… I thinks it’s this … " type comments.
If you are are having to lift a heavy e-bike, actually any bike, over a gate on a trail its probably a footpath and you you shouldn’t be riding it.
EMBN have covered all aspects of the Amflow on their website with videos and real world tests, ok they are partly sponsored by Amflow, but given my experience of them covering other bikes/brands/MTB related issues, I trust what they say.
Trail Bikes should just get in the sea. – what does that even mean??
A few comments …..
Benji sounds muffled, got a cold? bad mic setup?
Agreed. I’ve come to assume that any STW of I listen to will be a bit like earwigging two blokes chatting in a pub.
50+% of human communication is about body language/facial expression, a lot more work I would assume but a video podcast is much better.
I can’t watch a pod whilst doing something less interesting. Ride Companion do some nice shorts, but watching some guys sit about talking bikes for over an hour? No thanks.
If you are talking numbers have them in front of you, quite a few “… I thinks it’s this … ” type comments.
Agreed.
If you are are having to lift a heavy e-bike, actually any bike, over a gate on a trail its probably a footpath and you you shouldn’t be riding it.
Yeah but….
EMBN have covered all aspects of the Amflow on their website with videos and real world tests, ok they are partly sponsored by Amflow, but given my experience of them covering other bikes/brands/MTB related issues, I trust what they say.
How could you possibly trust, in isolation, a review of a product in sponsored content?
Trail Bikes should just get in the sea. – what does that even mean??
Benji is wrong. The middle ground is where it’s at, Tony Blair just said as much. Oh. Hang on…
Fair play to you for listening to it, but honestly it sounds like you’re not the target market – you don’t understand audio as a medium, you seem unfamiliar with the concept of podcasts (2 men in a shed wittering, normally), you don’t understand trail as a type of bike, you’re offended by gates on rides and you prefer content sponsored by Amflow for opinions of Amflow.
You only riding in England @gazzab1955?
Plenty places that aren’t footpaths that need a hoik over a gate…
My main ebike purchasing criterion was whether I could comfortably lift it over a fence. Having lived with an SL bike for nigh on 2 years now, that would still be the major thing for me (including hike a bike). I’m hoping solid state batteries cause a step change (reduction) in ebike weight to make lifting and hike a bike doable with decent range.
One of my ebikes is 28kg and I’ve not encounterd an obstacle I’ve struggled too much with (apart from the stile at the bottom of Black Rocks Gully down to the canal – locals will know and the farmer is a wee scamp who dislikes bikes!) – get stronger you bunch of wimps 😉
Anyway, live in the Derbyshire Dales and you’re riding footpaths, or you’re missing a lot/most of the good stuff. Just be courteous and considerate is my mantra
Kudos to you, my Privateer is 26.3kg and I endlessly bitch about its weight. Next ebike will be at least a couple of kg lighter, for handling reasons more than stiles and gates.
I’m fine with the EP801 power, happy to have more but probably won’t use it
I’ll try to listen to the podcast when it gets onto apple
I don’t really care what singletrack.com think about anything
Strange comment
Unless you are actually referring to singletrack.com which is a capital markets website?
Yeah neither do I. Not even been to the website, so don’t know what they are into.
I read Benji’s initial take on the Amflow power, so don’t need to listen to a podcast.
Only too powerful a force against normal bikes. Rare to see people of unassisted bikes these days.
I had a play last night with the updated power on my bosch equipped bike. I will admit my climbing technique is more akin to an eplipetic sloth than Tom Piddcock so take my perspective as you see fit. The power was bordering on ridiculous. It was a fight, getting pulled between trying to keep the front wheel down or the back end from wheel spinning like a 16 year old in his new Corsa. On the less steep it got me to the speed cutoff in no time, for sure makes short work of the dull climbs, but topped out the limit rapidly. It also ripped through my battery in less than an hour I’d smashed 50% of my juice. A constant of late I see in the Cube groups on FB is questions asking how to circumvent the speed limit, which I think is a natural evolution of the extra power. It’s like having a speed limited Ferrari for some I imagine. Not that I condone it, I think it’s sadly par for the course and understandably why some would have concerns on what it could lead to. For me the bike will stay topped out at 85-100nm, and that’s across the few modes I use. I can’t be arsed burning through drivetrains like lunatic. Just my take on my usage, other opinions exist.
I listened to the podcast the other day despite being towards the ‘anti-e-bike’ end of the scale.
It is interesting to hear e-converts views and opinions on eeebs.
What I found most interesting is Benji’s idea that there’s no consequences or impacts of having a higher powered e-bike but also that it can manage to remove too much of the challenge/effort (or at least that’s what I understood),
I kinda feel like you can’t have it both ways, getting the ‘best’ version of a labour saving device and then complain that it removed too much labour from the activity… Wasn’t that the point?
It does also feel like e-bikes are soaking up cycling media bandwidth now though (or maybe I need to find different media). I get that company’s are pushing them hard now, but there is much more to MTBs than DJI’s latest e-bike motor.
The little debate over what to call “unassisted” bikes was funny, they’re just bikes/MTBs they came first, if you want to describe the newer leccy versions prefix them with an ‘e’ . Anyone using “acoustic” or other descriptors need to know it does make you sound like a bit of a bellend… soz 😘
I’m not a Bosch user, but I think if you set dynamic assist (or something or other) to -1, you get traction control. You’d have to research it to be 100% certain though
I’d agree with that. The latest Avinox is breathlessly covered in immense detail despite not being really of interest or relevant to a large swathe of the population – it feels in some ways a bit like AI being covered in huge detail by every mainstream outlet.
I think you may be confusing large swathes of STW forum users with large swathes the general MTB buying public.
I’m as happy to read about normal MTB’s as much as eMTB’s, but like it or not, eMTB’s are for the majority now
I think you’re right. I was out yesterday around Llangollen with my daughter and stopped where three chaps in their 60s in Haibikes had stopped. They asked all sorts of questions about my bike, who made it, what motor did it have, what size battery was it, etc. For the record I have a Specialized Levo Gen 2 so about as common as it gets for brand recognition. They also said without eBikes for them the other option was stay at home.
Bosch are pretty useless at explaining exactly what tweaking the settings will do or even what the difference between modes is 🤔
It’s not really the outright weight tbf, more the cussed awkward shape of the things. It’s much easier to, say, manhandle a 28kg kettlebell than the same mass in the shape of a mountain bike with bloody great swivelling handlebars, wheels, fat tubes that are hard to grip etc.
It always makes me laugh when people start arguing that e-bikes are fantastic for building fitness when they exist specifically to reduce effort. I know ‘fitness’ is more nuanced than simply working as hard as you can, but I don’t really get why some people can’t simply accept that they’re fun and fast because they’re assisted, but also feel the need to insist that they’re somehow working really, really hard at the same time, much harder than they would work without assistance etc.
And yes, I get that you can ride zone 2 up steep hills if that’s your bag or turn the motor off and simply pedal a very heavy mountain bike around, which seems like a peculiarly perverse thing to do.
In other news: journos are great at being brainwashed by an industry that just wants to sell more and more new stuff and love new shiny things partly because they’re simply intrinsically more interesting than old shiny things. [don’t ask how I know etc].
At what power should you just accept the obvious and buy a Sur Ron. The whole massive power, but it’s just an e-bike thing and different thing is a farce.
There is a real issue in that the vast majority of e-bikes I see are for commuting, and where I live on mixed paths, but they’re sharing legislation with e-MTB’s that are basically pushing the envelope of that legislation as far as possible ( till it breaks)
“In other news: journos are great at being brainwashed by an industry that just wants to sell more and more new stuff and love new shiny things partly because they’re simply intrinsically more interesting than old shiny things. [don’t ask how I know etc]."
In other other news, journos probably (almost certainly) have reader data which drives what stories are written. If nobody read about and engaged with DJI stories, I suspect they wouldn’t write stories about DJI motors… Conversely, if their data suggested traffic figures on DJI stories were higher than average, they’d probably write more stories about DJI motors 🤷♂️
The second part, about new things being more interesting, is a no-brainer!
…ish. It’s clear DJI pump out a lot of material with their new releases, which is a godsend for journalists, particularly those who have targets to hit a certain amount of “content" per week. Bikeradar is v good at putting out at least 2 stories/ reviews a day, but a product update with a big load of manufacturer detail, and faux outrage around it, really helps them!
You might be surprised, my experience of specialist journalism is that the systematic use of carefully curated reader data is often trumped by other stuff like whether DJI’s PR has a nice smile and a winning telephone manner… plus the compelling need to create content, any content. Call me cynical etc.
As for journos being neophytes, what I’m getting at is the thing where there’s a tendency to be dazzled by stuff just because it’s novel and overrate it as a result, the old Whyte 46 was a prime example. Journos raved about it because it was the first, relatively light, long travel trail bike out there, but somehow overlooked that it was unpleasantly tall and had twitchy steering that made it mildly terrifying when speeds increased beyond a certain point.
I know this is, to an extent, modern life, where it’s all about more and more new and more advanced ‘stuff’ and cycling is no different to many other industries/business areas, but it seems a shame that we’ve taken a device, the bicycle, which has always been a relatively simple thing powered by a human being and turned it into something that’s slowly creeping towards being a crap e-motorcycle with pedals. YMMV etc.
Journos aren’t noted for cutting off the hand that feeds them. The bike industry is all about selling e-bikes and so all journos are pro e-bikes. It’s that simple.
I don’t have an ebike, I dont see the point of full power bikes if you like riding. I kind of get the sl ones that are light enough to be close to a normal bike especially for winch and plunge enduro style riding