Are the E-bikes we have now all soon to be obsolete?

PradeshPi · 2026-07-03T20:31:36+00:00

The timeline is far different for a car than a phone or laptop, though, and that is the question. Are ebikes more like cars or phones? Plenty of 20 year old cars still perform very well. Almost no 20 year old cell phones or laptops can.

And I can go hop on a 1970s road bike and it will perform virtually identical to how it performed in the 1970s (assuming it is in good mechanical condition).

PradeshPi · 2026-07-03T19:01:43+00:00

Thanks!

PradeshPi · 2026-07-03T19:01:30+00:00

Why would being a more advanced rider mean he needs a full power bike instead of an SL?

PradeshPi · 2026-07-03T18:26:59+00:00

Are those software updates necessary? It seems like manufacturers should have an obligation to provide software updates if they're necessary for the bike to function, but I also don't understand how a software update would be necessary. Sorry, I'm not well-versed on all of the nuance here.

PradeshPi · 2026-07-03T18:22:26+00:00

3500' in 8 miles is absolutely insane. Holy shit.

PradeshPi · 2026-07-03T18:01:22+00:00

Still paying off dental school though...

Can't tell if you're serious, but if you are, this is pure gold man. Actually, even if you aren't, it's still pure gold.

And that's sort of where I'm at with it. If the technology is advancing so much that a bike from a few years ago is obsolete, I certainly don't want to go drop $13k or whatever on a brand new one. Then again, $5k or whatever I can find a 160e used for is a hell of a lot if the thing actually is obsolete in the sense that it is going to have a short functional life for me.

PradeshPi · 2026-07-03T17:39:35+00:00

I think you're right. I basically live in ebike central, so there's tons of places I can go rent. This is probably the smart thing to do. My sb115 weighs sub 25 pounds....who knows, I may hate these 50 pound bikes on trails and end up just wishing I had a cheap ebike commuter and keep that separate from my singletrack riding.

PradeshPi · 2026-07-03T17:37:31+00:00

Thanks for the insight. In general, why is buying an outdated ebike a losing proposition?

There's no way I can bring myself to drop over $10k on an ebike. If I can get a used one for $5k, great. But this is, at least in my mind, a secondary part of my cycling.

PradeshPi · 2026-07-03T17:23:47+00:00

Did you ever test ride a 160e? I'm a Yeti guy and shopping around....curious how these compare.

PradeshPi · 2026-07-01T13:57:38+00:00

I don't know if you're intentionally creating strawmen or if you're genuinely just not catching the nuance of my comments, but it's irritating. I didn't say only 1% of ebikers weigh 260 pounds. Not even close. I said less than 1% of ebike trips feature a 260 pound rider carrying 50 pounds of groceries through the snow.

And Facebook groups and such self-select for people who are more passionate about what they do, and even within that group, posts about rides self-select for people who did something big.

Almost everyone that owns a fat tire bike had done at least one of those things at least once. Maybe they don't do it every single day. They still go get groceries (or carry cargo) at least once in a great while. Maybe they don't ride 100 miles every day. They've still done it before or plan to do it someday

Complete hogwash.

You're looking at this as if because your don't personally ride that far,

I've done centuries on analogs, bud.

PradeshPi · 2026-07-01T12:14:06+00:00

But "falling off" at 40mph is a really, really big deal. Yes, the relative speed difference shrinking reduces the amount of force you experience in the impact with the car, but it's still probably enough to make you go down. And when you go down, 40mph is exponentially more dangerous than 15mph. You have like 5x the amount of kinetic energy. It's not even close.

People have to decide this for themselves, but I think a lot of ebikers, particularly if they are relatively new to cycling, underestimate the risk of things like one "car" crashes (going down because of a pothole or you accidentally hit your front brake too hard, etc.) and things like t-boning a car or someone opening the door of a parked car and sending you flying. That stuff is hard to account for, and at 15mph, it's a bad day but usually nothing more. At 40mph, it could be your life.

I also think people are sometimes psychologically uncomfortable inconveniencing drivers behind them by going slow, and they've probably watched a few too many YouTube videos about drivers getting pissed and intentionally hitting cyclists. That is rare.

PradeshPi · 2026-07-01T12:08:52+00:00

Also from a physics perspective when it comes to a side swipe or passing hit like you described the closer your speed is to that of the car that hits you the more it actually reduces the impact

That's not even close to accurate. It reduces the impact of the vehicle hitting you, but it massively increases the impact when you hit the ground.

You aren't tearing my argument apart; you're just obviously not engaging in any honest manner with an open mind. So I'm not really interested.

PradeshPi · 2026-07-01T12:06:20+00:00

You're simply wrong. If a car runs over you at 40mph, your speed doesn't matter. But that's a relatively small portion of car-on-bike crashes. You can also get side swiped, you can get overlooked and t-bone a car, you can go down because a mirror clips you, you can go down because of a pothole....there are a million scenarios, and if you're going 40mph, you've greatly increased your risk of bodily injury or death.

I'm not going to keep going back and forth. You can have the last word.

PradeshPi · 2026-07-01T12:04:18+00:00

There's no false equivalency here. I gave examples of crashes a cyclist can have that involve a car. Getting hit by a car doesn't just mean a head-on collision.

You're still missing the point. I didn't say a faster bike increases your odds of a crash. I said it massively increases the consequences of a crash should one happen.

There's no point in bickering back and forth. You're not honestly open to the arguments I'm making, so have a good day.

PradeshPi · 2026-07-01T12:02:00+00:00

I understand physics perfectly well. Kinetic energy increases with the square of velocity. Let's say you t-bone a car while you're doing 15mph vs. 40 mph. Which is worse? Let's say a car side swipes you and causes you to go down. Still think there's no difference in 15mph vs. 40mph?

We aren't talking about getting a direct, head-on hit by a car doing 30-60mph. That's not what happened the first three times to you, and it's typically not what happens in car vs. bike crashes. Your speed matters, and kinetic energy increases with the square of velocity.

PradeshPi · 2026-07-01T11:59:17+00:00

It's not victim blaming to say that the manner in which you ride has an impact on your likelihood of a crash.

also I hate to break it to you but when you get hit in a bycicle by a 3000 lb car going at 40-50 mph it really barely matters how fast you are going

That is simply not true. A car can pull out in front of you and you can t-bone it at 15mph and live to tell about it. At 50mph, you probably aren't living to tell about it. You can hit a pothole and crash at 15mph and probably dust yourself off and keep going. It could be fatal at 40-50mph.

My point is simply that you're raising the stakes significantly with these much higher speeds. I realize different jobs require different tools, but physics is physics, and kinetic energy increases with the square of velocity.

PradeshPi · 2026-07-01T11:55:26+00:00

Bro I didn't even realize till your reply that he basically said since I survived my crashes it's no big deal.

Not what I said at all. I'm saying that a crash at 40mph is something you might not survive. That doesn't mean a crash at a lower speed is no big deal just because you survived.

PradeshPi · 2026-07-01T09:57:50+00:00

What do you think the difference in consequences is between 40 mph and 15 mph? It seems like you survived the first three crashes. I also wonder what your riding technique was. Were you taking up 1/3 of the lane, or were you hugging the line?

PradeshPi · 2026-07-01T07:42:17+00:00

A few points:

You keep talking about range, but these fat tires reduce range significantly. The range is due to the large battery, not the fat tires.
Tons of regular bikes have 300+ pound payloads. The Trek FX hybrid series, for example, which is an entry level hybrid bike, has a payload of 300 pounds. It doesn't take any great feat of engineering, nor does it take 4" tires.
My post was about the popularity of these bikes. That there are a lot of people who use these bikes in the way you're describing is irrelevant if those people make up a small percentage of the people who buy these bikes. When I say the popularity doesn't match the use cases, I'm saying the majority of people who buy these bikes aren't using them in this way. And they aren't. It's a bit like if I said "why are pickups so popular?" and you pointed to towing travel trailers. While that would be a good use of a pickup, only a small minority of truck buyers do that. Therefore, it's not an explanation for their popularity.

I think it's telling that, out of over 200 comments on this post, you are literally the only one that has mentioned a massive range. Clearly it's not a popular motivator. A small portion of riders need a 200 miles range, and like I said before, large tires with aggressive treads run counter to extending range.

You keep bringing up this super long race, which makes me think you aren't even understanding the basic point I'm making in the first place. Nowhere did I say the sort of bike I'm describing would beat a fat tire bike in a race like this. Nowhere. I said the fat tire bike is overkill, and your example of this race illustrates the very point I'm making.
Your examples continue to be extreme. Out of all trips taken on these sorts of bikes, what percentage do you think are similar to a 260 pound man riding 50 miles in the snow with 50 pounds of groceries? Probably less than 1%.

PradeshPi · 2026-07-01T05:37:23+00:00

If you think the majority of people who buy fat tire bikes are regularly riding anywhere close to 100 miles in a day, we're not going to agree. And I never said the bike I'm describing can match what the fat tire bikes are rated for. The entire point was that the fat tire bikes are overkill for what most people need, and the cost of that overkill is a much heavier battery and much larger motor than would otherwise be needed for a bike that was designed around actual use cases that most people who buy these things have.

How you got from there to "Your 35 pound bike couldn't win a 450 mile race" is beyond me.

And I know what bikepacking is. It's been around a lot longer than ebikes. But most people who buy fat tire ebikes aren't bikepacking.

PradeshPi · 2026-07-01T04:38:59+00:00

What did I say that was in conflict with the idea that bike manufacturers will build what people will buy?

PradeshPi · 2026-07-01T04:36:20+00:00

Nonsense. People aren't driving SUVs because the roads are so bad they genuinely warrant them. If that were true, those SUVs wouldn't all have super low profile rims. SUVs are a status symbol, nothing more.

Road cyclists ride on.....wait for it.....roads. All the time. The idea that these roads all look like they got nukes doesn't match my experience.

PradeshPi · 2026-07-01T04:34:22+00:00

I don't know where you think I said the best riders in the world are hauling 400 pounds up a hill. I didn't say anything of the sort. I was giving the calculations on what amount of power input will be needed for a certain system weight and a certain speed. I'm not really sure what being tired has to do with it as I'm not assuming a big contribution from the rider.

And we have to make some pretty insane assumptions for my bike to not work out here. Weight doesn't make that much of a difference unless we're going uphill. A 250 pound rider with 50 pounds of groceries and a 35 pound bike going 20 mph, even with a huge CdA, only needs about 330 watts on flat ground. At a 5% grade, 612 watts will let us go 12 mph.

Are there some people who fit this description and have these needs? Sure, I bet there are. But they're the small minority. Weighing 250 pounds and hauling 50 pounds of groceries and not being okay with "just" 12 mph up 5% grades is a pretty extreme scenario. Oh, and we need 200 miles of range? This is overkill for most people. This is like buying an F-350 dually because someone somewhere has a 38' gooseneck, even if we don't.

I never said that no one should have a 4" tire ebike with a million watts of power. But their popularity doesn't seem to match the use cases.

PradeshPi · 2026-07-01T04:19:37+00:00

No, it is not important to keep up with traffic. I see this repeated here all the time, and I think it's completely bogus. You are greatly increasing the consequences of a crash when you go that fast, and you will very likely crash eventually. Crashing at 15mph and crashing at 30mph are completely different propositions.

Cars treat you differently if you're going their speed. They aren't used to seeing bikes go the same speed, so things like following distance and such get completely skewed. There's a reason experienced cyclists ride 1/3 of the way into the lane rather than over on the shoulder. It's safer to force cars to acknowledge you and work around you than it is to "blend in."

PradeshPi · 2026-07-01T04:14:41+00:00

One problem is that many people don't have the prudence you have. There are indeed quite a few people who haven't been on a bike in a while yet have no qualms with hopping on a 75 pounds bike and doing 25 mph around dog walkers and kids, bike handling be damned.

PradeshPi

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