nothing to add to the post except to thank the OP for taking a positive slant and tone on his recap!

(remarkable, as that's not the normal trajectory for ebike discussions on bicycle forums.)

With that logic, videos games should have ended pro football.

I can't say that I've really noticed inappropriate speeds.

The only thing that has ever slightly bothered me about e-bikes is watching groups young kids in their teens, 20's doing singletrack, etc. I just wonder if maybe one of them would have been the next Ned Overend or something, but will never know because never bothered to their natural engine.

These are also fantastic for mixed ability cycling vacations.

bang on!. E-bikes for old , fat, wonky-kneed set ..i guess, ..but seeing young and able bodied using them is fucking sad

One of my friends who's mid 20s got an Ebike. At first I thought it was pretty pathetic of him since he's generally in decent shape but doesn't have much time to bike. Now I think it's amazing he's got one, I can go ride with my friend and fitness isn't a limiter. When he had a regular mountain bike he was slow and the ride would max out at 4 miles. Now he has his Ebike I can go ride as fast as I want and as far. His fitness also improved a ton so he really doesn't need a crutch anymore. I love pedaling but I know it isn't for everyone but more people on bikes is always better.

Way too many e-bike users under 60 out there.

I'm totally cool with the random old couple that seem to cruise by me sans effort on the mixed use path. But when I see someone my age and in relative shape crush me while on an e-bike I get super annoyed.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Just pedal harder and crush ebike guy and say, 'and my motor is natural'. For sure there is an e-bike set who wants to make fun of people like us and hurt our egos, but don't play into their hands. Either just let them blow by and don't play, or gauge if you can play and put down the hurt and have fun with it.

But mainly it is getting more people out and making them fitter as they do a cross between riding a moped and riding a bicycle. As I said, the main downside is a lot of people who are going way faster than they have the skills to deal with, but it should not take too long to develop the skills at speed and then everyone is happy. More riders out on roads is good thing. Strength in numbers.

If I could crush them I would. But they're doing 25MPH and I'm pumping out at 17-18. They get the IC-Man Peloton draft effect.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Haha....then let them enjoy their mopeds at 25mph up a 10% grade making doped up Lance look slow.

You're on a human powered bike.

We don't get revv'd up about motorbikes and that''s what these are....underpowered motorbikes that don't pollute in your face.

It's ok to be crushed by e-bikes .... as long as they don't upload their rides on strava as a bike activity. They keep stealing my mtb koms, I'm not sure they realize that this puts me in a semi-depressive state each time I get the dreaded "uh oh" notification.
Notice the pink. Well.. is that pink? I might need to call my shrink for advice :'D

Are people seeing lots of ebikes on their long rides? The vast majority I see are on bike paths and they're generally the fat tire versions, but once you get outside the main path, there's maybe a handful of road ebikes. This may have to do with that part of those rides being in hilly areas which tend to crush the ebike batteries (which usually top out around 25-30 miles anyways) so you've already drained the battery by the time you get to the hills. That or they're zooming by me too fast to see the giant bottom bracket motors.

OP here - I made this post because I'm starting to actually see them regularly out now, and these are on hilly routes. I suspect the batteries on these ebikes have improved a lot.

Just randomly google debikes, and this bike on sale has 120miles of range and pushes 320 watts. And this is 'only ' $3700, compared to the $7k+ of the higher end ones.

Yeah, I may be biased from the Bosch system on our cargo bike (it has a 400 wh battery, tops out at 20mph, and in it's doubling output mode gets around 25 miles on flat, but it's also a giant bike). There also may be some added bias from picking routes that would be unpleasant to run out of battery in the middle of on a bike (a quick look at reviews on the Vado makes it sound like 120 miles is with their extender and in the absolute best case scenario - more typical for the area I'm looking in would be ~40 miles without the extender which would still be 10 miles or so short of the full loops).

Definitely imagine this continuing to get better and better so pretty sure I'll see more of these over time. Maybe Bosch will finally get some more competition and a replacement battery pack won't be nearly $1k by the time ours needs replacing.

There's a guy brings his specialized bike on the weekly Saturday 120km rides. It's 'different', and I'm still not sure how I feel about it. He's fairly respectful of the group dynamics, and at the end of the day then it is certainly good for him (he's been a long time rider with the group on a normal bike), if I'm honest is probably good for my fitness as the whole group does work harder, although this is the negative too. It's really hard to have a 'gentle' ride or even steady part of the ride.

The only bit that's an issue is on long steady descents or flat with tailwind where the motor won't work over 45kph and if the group is hammering he'll get dropped. But he'll catch up again after 5 mins of battery boost on the next flat / uphill.

I'm 26 and I'd love to get an ebike for commuting to/from work and for grocery store trips. Don't want to deal with being sweaty when I show up at work, and I'd rather spend my riding time/energy doing fun rides instead of errands. I know a bunch of people who feel similarly. Tons of reasons to ride them, regardless of age, no need to get annoyed.

I can understand that purpose and support that. But I'm only riding long on the mixed use path on weekends.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

I thought of getting an ebike for this reason. Its cleaner energy than driving my car and I get some exercise too and can do tasks on bike that would be "time crunched" on normal riding for which I may end up taking my car instead. But I have not been able to bring myself to the level of getting one for ego reasons. I am reasonbly strong for a 55 year old and can pretty well keep up in a draft of anyone and take my own pulls in most groups, so I am not there yet to get an ebike and be the old guy who needs motor assist to keep up LOL. I'd rather try to keep up and be dropped than have the moto assist. What I really need more than an ebike is drop 7-8 lbs and then I am golden. Its too easy for me to open the bank account and get an ebike, but its harder to lose 8 lbs. I'd rather try to do the hard work to get lean then gain watts through my bank account.

@Dev - you don't need the e-bike.

For men, dealing with sweat on commutes is easy and shoudn't be a limiter. Just shower well before you ride, and give yourself enough cooldown time before you arrive so you can towel off. Sweat is only stinky when it's old and the bacteria proliferate - with freshly showered skin and clean clothes, there is no problem.

I've been bike commuting 1x/wk and will up it to 2-3x now that it's not as dark in the morning, and I'm in business formal for work, never had a problem with sweating on the commute despite not having shower facilities there. In fact, a typical bike commute day for me is bike commute (totally sweaty when I arrive), run 1hr at lunch (again totally sweaty) and bike commute home, and definitely have had zero need for a shower. You don't even need anything fancy - a simple medium towel is all you need and you're good to go.

The one thing it does help a lot to have is a changing place. Sure, the men's bathroom works, but it's not the most pleasant thing to do - a office or lockable room/closet works great even if you only occupy it for 10 minutes or less.

One of the criteria when we moved offices was to get one with a shower and change room. Having said, that, at my office is it perfectly acceptable to show up at meetings in sports clothes as long as you are not stinky and are dry. Its not like sports clothes are any worse than shorts and T shirts that most of the software developers wear. Just change before a customer meeting please...but inside the company no one cares. Then again, I run the place, so kinda set the standard and at the end of the day customers don't pay us for how good we look, they pay us for how well our products perform. We can't ship beautiful people to camp inside a server and react to live customer data streams to get things done....the software has to run itself from the cloud....so bike to work, ebike to work, drive to work, bus to work or sit at home in sweatpants and get your stuff done and take your ebike out for a hammerfest at mid day is all fine!!!

Ouch.....

Well, some of us had old habits that die hard. I worked in marketing for a while followed by a tech startup... after spending my prior career wearing suits

I tried and bought polos and jeans, but I feel a lot more comfortable in dress shirt and pants (even vs. slacks or kahkis). Happy to lose the suit and tie though.

+1
I use my e bike instead of our family buying another car. Commute to work in work attire without breaking a sweat (and pulling the kiddo trailer to daycare for parts of the ride).

With spiked tires I use it year round.