And you know what was always around on bike conventions? These fucking things. And yet you never ever see them used anywhere in real life, and there’s several good reasons for that. Those things are heavy as fuck, and even a tiny little bit of wind (especially crosswind) will have you crawl along at 10 km/h while pushing 200 Watts – and yes, that may not sound like much to any road biker, but try doing that for ten hours a day for ten days in a row. And with all that weight, you don’t even have any other equipment accounted for like clothes, hygiene, food, cooking gear, water(!), and so on. It’s really no surprise that these manufacturers nowadays advertise them with e-bikes, without ever answering the issue of how to charge your e-bike when you’re travelling like they do in those nice brochures, in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. In reality, you basically have to go from camping ground to camping ground, hoping for a free car-spot (if the camping ground will even let you set up on one of those – here in Europe, a lot of camping ground operators are surprisingly bike unfriendly) to use a power outlet.
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All right, here goes nothing: I have spent almost every single vacation over the past 20 years biking through Europe. Rarely in combination with trains, [typically just by bike.](https://www.reddit.com/r/bicycling/comments/14uerl5/let_me_introduce_you_to_a_new_useful_word/)
And you know what was always around on bike conventions? These fucking things. And yet you never ever see them used anywhere in real life, and there’s several good reasons for that. Those things are heavy as fuck, and even a tiny little bit of wind (especially crosswind) will have you crawl along at 10 km/h while pushing 200 Watts – and yes, that may not sound like much to any road biker, but try doing that for ten hours a day for ten days in a row. And with all that weight, you don’t even have any other equipment accounted for like clothes, hygiene, food, cooking gear, water(!), and so on. It’s really no surprise that these manufacturers nowadays advertise them with e-bikes, without ever answering the issue of how to charge your e-bike when you’re travelling like they do in those nice brochures, in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. In reality, you basically have to go from camping ground to camping ground, hoping for a free car-spot (if the camping ground will even let you set up on one of those – here in Europe, a lot of camping ground operators are surprisingly bike unfriendly) to use a power outlet.