This morning Mark rode in to the office on this enormobike.
It’s a Haibike Fat Six and in addition to being one of those attention seeking fat bikes it’s also an eBike powered by a Bosch motor. In line with UK legislation it only provides power up to 16mph. After that you are on your own as the motor does not provide any power to the wheels. There are four power settings – eco, tour, sport and turbo. depending on which you choose the range is decreased or increased. In Eco mode the dashboard display gives a fully charged estimate of 42 miles of range and in Turbo mode that drops to around 10.
Anyway, more on the details of the bike later. What’s very interesting is the fact that this morning Mark decided to Strava his commute and this is video explains what happened.
https://vimeo.com/124807686
Hatter may be right unfortunately – already seen one group of old boys waving their sticks on the South Downs after a full-suss ebike shot past them uphill, a decently fit cyclist would have struggled to cut them up on the incline but not the fat lad with the throttle, he wasn’t hanging around downhill either on account of being able to haul a stupid amount of travel around.
If ebikes mess up strava then they will have done some good for riding
I reckon getting some decent running KOMs on my Segway should also be pretty straightforward.
Its still possible to be polite, courteous and respectful with an e-bike, bike like a loon and you’ll get whats due.
Or feed the stereotype, get MAMIL’ed or Cammo’ed up and smash their faces into pulp making sure to do a burnout and melt their crimpolene Red Sox…. we get what we deserve in the main.
Does this mean strava is dead and people will stop recking trails for extra seconds, or does it mean some kind of Strava War is about to begin…
I presume Mark is condoning breaking terms and conditions…
You presume wrong. Very wrong. The point, which is obvious, is that this is a problem for Strava and their users who value their KOMs. This isn’t a story advocating this behaviour, in fact we’ve reported these KOMs to Strava in order they can be removed.
But then you knew this, right?
I think that looks ace! I would love to try one. I had a quick spin on a Scott full sus e bike last year and it was a hoot. I struggle to envisage a backlash from walkers about e bikes any more than people riding like diddies already causes. The only downsides for me would be weight and range but they aren’t insurmountable problems. Want one!
The best thing that could ever happen to strava. Go eMental!
Mark – would you say the extra power has the potential to increase the damage one rider would do to the trails in poor weather conditions? It’s easy enough to spin the wheels in slippery mud without an engine, my worry is that these things will have people hooning about digging great trenches in boggy trails instead of using good technique or getting off and pushing like a normally aspirated rider would (most people aren’t fit enough to spin out for long before it gets knackering)
I don’t have a problem with folks who need ’em riding them but don’t like the idea of a surge of “motocross lite” riders ripping up sensitive trails as they motor up them in poor weather…
It has an ECU to control the power cutout so someone will reprogramme it to get the top speed up
“How do you determine if they should be able to do without a motor?”
Riders should be able to determine that for themselves.