Should Your Next Bike Be An E-Bike?

The debate between EMTBs and MTBs has been raging on since electric bikes first surfaced in the cycling world, but with EMTB tech advancing at an extremely fast rate and getting lighter and lighter, more people are making the switch, but should you?

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should your next bike be an ebike whoa no need to shake with the screen like that I know some of you will be going no definitely not uh but I know some of you are curious as well so let’s look at it why do I think you maybe should consider your next bike to be an eike [Music] let me start with a quick profile of myself hi I’m Neil if you’ve been watching gmbn for a while you might know all this here goes I’m 40 years old I spent 15 years racing downhill 10 years as a pro racing World Cups then I went on to racing jro before becoming a mountain bike coach and then a presenter here on gmbn okay so there’s some background on me let’s say I’ve ridden lots of different bikes and I’ve quite a lot of experience from over the years we do get to ride loads of amazing bikes my partner Brands here at gmbm but also I Moonlight a bit over on our ebike Channel ambn because I tried ebikes and I love the variety so I’ll be looking into the pros and cons of ebikes cuz there are definitely cons don’t get me wrong there’s things that aren’t so good about them and same with your normal bikes acoustic Bikes mountain bikes whatever you want to call them so hopefully I can give you a bit of my insight so you can decide for yourself oh yeah and don’t get me wrong I hated ebikes a bit to begin with until I rode them I even hated 29ers and now that’s pretty much all I ride so let’s start with the pros of an ebike when you compare it to a normal bike of course you’ve got a battery and power so you can ride uphill faster for people like me you might have a busy family and work life where you don’t find as much time to go and ride your bike it simply means more downhills for me if I’ve got an hour and a half two hours to ride I can get way more meters of climbing and therefore more descending so I use these as my kind of uro downhill bike whatever where I’m just trying to bomb out as many downhill runs as I can and with that extra power I can do that as quickly as possible obviously for some people that doesn’t matter it also means for people that maybe don’t have the fitness that they would quite like or even they used to have or maybe even a disability that they can ride up some pretty serious climbs with this power you’d be surprised how deep and how Technical and how many meters of climbing you can do above what you may normally do on a normal bike and also it means that a lot of different sort of speed and ability of Rider can actually ride together even if maybe one of you is on an ebike and the rest is super fit on normal bikes you can all ride as a group and maybe that wasn’t possible in the past extra power also means they’re great for carrying lots of equipment and I use mine particularly you might see the little space up there for going for main by R with my kids I’ve got a seat that goes in the middle and you can again ride up some pretty serious Hills and go for some proper rides whereas on a normal bike the kids start weighing a lot quite quickly and it becomes really inhibitive you don’t want to go and do like a 15K rise it’s super tiring I’ve also done a video on emn where I showed off kind of how capable you could make an e- mountain bike kind of like anv where you could use it to drop the kids off a nursery stick paniers on it for carrying or shopping around then the weekend take all that stuff off and go for a proper off-road ride don’t make the mistake of just thinking that climbing with an ebike is easier and faster it can be just as challenging and a lot of fun cuz now you can really find the most technical of climbs Steve on the ambn is great for this he’s got some really good trial skills and obviously you see this in the ews they go up some really really technical stuff that you is going to be lung busting on a norm bike if not impossible so really challenge yourself some climbing fun on ebike is a lot of fun right some of the cons of an ebike and they definitely are some not saying you should go out and buy an ebike for everybody cuz some people it definitely doesn’t suit them so once you can ride uphills easier you know for some people that’s a con so they ride mountain bikes to get really fit and yes you can get fit on KNE bike I’ve definitely done rides where if you’re riding the lower power you’re getting a really good workout your heart rates up I’ve even done some of those downhill rides where you know my whole body’s aching a bit like I’ve ridden a motocross bike afterwards so you can get a really good workout having said that I’ve never done a really big ebike ride and woke up in the morning and had those same achy legs that you’d get on a big push bike ride a big one is they are more expensive so an entry level ebike is more than an entry level uh normal bike but are they more expensive on their like for like naturally aspirated versions so let’s look at a brand Canyon uh their entry level spectral is £499 although that is an aluminium frame but the cheapest spectral on they do is a CF6 a carbon fiber 6 and that’s 4,399 obviously we comparing apples oranges a little bit cuz one’s aluminium one’s carbon but the entry level is more expensive but if you look at two like for likes there’s the spectral cf8 on it’s 5,599 and the cf8 uh mountain bike non bike is £ 4,399 so about £1,000 more for the same like for like bike but ones the Evike version they’re also more expensive to look after you’d be surprised how fast you go through drivetrains they are ebike specific drivetrains with like heavier Duty and heavier weight cassettes but a lot of ebikes still come with your normal mountain bike components and you’d be really surprised how quickly they stretch and eventually start slipping brake pads again because of the weight these bikes you’ll go through those a lot quicker than normal bike and probably tires as well so it’s not just purchasing the thing you’ll probably find that you have to spend more money looking after it as well they’re not that easy to transport they’re heavy so if you’re putting it in the back of your car taking the wheels out and getting in you know some people it might be too heavy depending on what bike you have they’re often too heavy for bike racks so if you’re putting on the roof of your car check the weight limit uh some bikes in the past I’ve had to get a rack where you take the front wheel off the bike and then you take the battery out of the bike and then it’s just about on the limit uh but even then you will then driving along in all sorts of conditions without a battery on your bikes is not the best solution you might have to get a rear mounted rack if you live in a flat and you have to carry your bike up the stairs then just that added weight does not make life easy uh and don’t get started on hiker bike if you ever come to a style or you have to get up a steep hill as much as the walk mod can help you out it can be really hard work on a knee bike image dare I say it uh what people are going to think of you for ride a knee bike now I know some people aren’t bothered at all they don’t care what other people think but you probably will be called a cheater eventually by somebody so you might want to consider it but I don’t to be honest on a normal mountain bike you can’t run out of battery on an ebike it is something that you do once and you never do well you say that I’ve done loads of times run out of battery is an absolute killer depending on your bike this is a canyon Tor on it’s a big travel sort of free ride bike it’s not the lightest of bikes and if you’ve got to Pedal this up a hill without a battery bad times right a massive one I think is the rideability of an ebike it’s it’s different I’ve heard people say it’s a different sport I don’t think it is at all it’s it’s a maining bike but it’s heavier and it’s got power to help you out and it does change things like the climbing like I’ve said but they’re heavier don’t get me wrong and there are pro of that for sure I think you know you’ve got so much more grip I think they’re predictable I actually think they’re kind of in some ways easier to jump cuz you can’t kind of get pings wrong quite so easily but the cons of that are you know it’s a bigger way your thing it’s not as flickable so for tight Corners you’re going to have to muscle it around a lot more when I ride an E Bike and then jump back on a normal bike and bomb down a hill they feel so agile like throwing it around in the air as well don’t get wrong you can do it on an ebike but it’s a different sort of uh way you have to muscle the bike around and some people they like it some people they don’t so by now you might have decided whether your next bike is going to be an ebike or not or you might still be shouting at me but there is another option light ebikes then are they the perfect middle ground and actually what are light ebikes well they’re designed to ride much more like a normal bike with smooth support less power and torque than regular ebikes and therefore they can run smaller batteries and keep the whole package lighter weight at the moment they’re really isn’t much choice in lightweight ebikes the two that I’ve ridden are the Ora rise and the specialized SL Cano but let’s take a look at the numbers the or B rise comes with a 360 W battery compare that to the 500 up to about 900 that you see on full power ebikes Also let’s compare the torque the specialized Leo SL has 35 Newton M compare that to the full power Leo which has 90 however word on the street is there’s going to be more of these lightweight e bikes available on the market [Music] soon what about the rideability of the SL well I find it easier to ride than a full fat ebike cuz really you can paddle it up over the speed limit much more easily where normally bike as soon as you hit the limit that the motor won’t assist you at it becomes a big heavy bike again you just don’t get that feeling with the SL bikes so that’s it do you think your next bike will be an ebike but I’ll definitely leave it up to you for what you think I’m not saying you should definitely go ahead and get one they have their pros and cons and for me if I’m going to ride an ebike it’s the SL that works really well for me let us know what you think of ebikes down below and if you’d like to try one out