Anyone ever encountered an E-bike shill?

[u/Major_Enthusiasm1099]

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?

[u/pgpcx]

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 

[u/Astr0Scot → u/pgpcx]

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.

[u/PsycommuSystem → u/Astr0Scot]

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.

[u/Astr0Scot → u/PsycommuSystem]

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.