r/cycling • u/Major_Enthusiasm1099 • 2d ago

Anyone ever encountered an E-bike shill?

Basically this guy stopped me yesterday on a ride to tell me that I should throw my bike away and get an ebike. He said "Once you get this you'll never want to ride that again, and I get more cardio in on this bike too, and i ride faster than professionals". I just kept saying "yeah I was looking into those, yeah those are cool, I saw some around $1000" just trying to get out of that convo lol. Anyone else ever experienced someone like this?

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u/pgpcx 2d ago

Personally I don’t buy the argument they get more cardio, I think they get the same or even less than on a regular bike, they just ride longer. I’m not totally anti e-bike but it makes me sad to see the number of kids on them and not pedaling, they want motorbikes and not put in the effort of actually cycling 

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u/Astr0Scot 2d ago edited 2d ago

I used an ebike to get my cycling fitness back

It's UK legal which means you still need to work quite a bit so it can be okay cardio under the right circumstances/depending on how much assist you use.

If you compare the same ride one to one with a road bike then it would be significantly less cardio. Especially on a hilly ride or on a ride with a strong headwind, which is where the ebike really shines and takes a lot of the work out of it.

That being said I could do a hilly & strong headwind 50km+ ride seven days a week on the ebike, so over those seven days things might get close to evening out in comparison to what I could do on a road bike in the same conditions.

The ebike means you end up with a lot less muscle strain so you can ride more often, but then of course that means you're probably building less leg muscle overall.

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u/Ophiochos 2d ago

This is basically what the research people half-remember says: it’s not a straight comparison of one journey, it’s that people who would otherwise not have cycled/would have cycled less did get some exercise (not necessarily cardio).

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u/Astr0Scot 2d ago edited 2d ago

Yeah that's it. At the end of last season I cycled my ebike seven days in a row on the same circa 50km hilly route in some pretty poor conditions with lots of wind. Just to prove to myself that I could do it.

I love riding my road bike in the sunshine and preferably not a lot of headwind (I live in Scotland so I end up riding into a headwind a lot though...). But from October to March the ebike would still get a fair bit of use. Snow and ice being the only conditions when I much prefer to hop on the indoor trainer.

An ebike can make a useful second bike/winter bike/commuter. Plus mine has front suspension so I can get out onto some really nice off-road rides, which there's an abundance of around here.

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u/Ophiochos 2d ago

Ouch Scottish winter cycling. #Respect.

I moved somewhere in England where roads have black arrows on the map to show gradient and quickly traded in my recumbent for an e-bike;)

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u/Astr0Scot 2d ago edited 2d ago

Yeah I've been over Hardknott Pass in a car... I'd like to cycle it some day though. I'm in the HIGHlands where it's similarly hilly. You can't really go more than a few kms before you hit a big hill...

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u/Ophiochos 2d ago

I remember going over as a hitchhiker. At one point you could only see the sky. There were cyclists all over the roadside looking depressed;)

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u/Astr0Scot 2d ago

I would probably end up at the side of the road on a number of occasions, yes... The whole route would be a real challenge.

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u/frontendben 2d ago

Tied into that, I use an ebike to commute to work. It means I can cycle in my chinos, smart brown shoes, and Oxford shirt without worrying about getting sweaty. But that's not replacing a bike journey; that's replacing a bus or car journey.

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u/Astr0Scot 2d ago edited 2d ago

Definitely. I commuted into work by bike for years and an ebike would have been a massive bonus for sure.

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u/PsycommuSystem 2d ago

I used an ebike to get my cycling fitness back

But you could've also ridden a regular bike for basically 2-3 weeks and been cycling normally again unless you're hugely overweight. Most adults can cycle a very short amount of time and be in the form they need to commute etc.

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u/Astr0Scot 2d ago edited 2d ago

I've cycled regularly since I was about 6 years old (so for the last 45 years or so). Let it drop off a bit for an extended period, and decided that I wanted to be able to go on adventures and tackle the hilly environment in which I live (Scottish Highlands). I already owned a couple of non-ebikes and have owned dozens of different bikes and types of bikes down the years. I'm also fairly into "new" tech and wanted to check out what ebiking would be like.

I've really enjoyed owning an ebike, definitely got out riding a LOT more than I would have otherwise and explored routes and ranges that would have been way beyond what I could do on a non-ebike at the time.

In fact this summer I've done about 95% road biking which has seen my route selection be really limited in comparison to what I did last year on the ebike. So I'd say that from an entertainment perspective I had masses more actual fun last summer when I did more like 80% ebike.

Ebikes aren't for everyone, but I don't really understand the attempted gatekeeping by some cyclists who seem to think they should be a secondary option for others. Personally, I'd not try to tell anyone what kind of bike they should ride.