I don’t yet own an e-bike, and I’ve never ridden one. With luck and a lot of regular riding, I won’t need to use one for many years yet. Still, e-bikes have already impacted my life.
Most of the organized rides I register for allow e-bikes. And a lot of their riders register. You would probably guess that most folks riding them in the organized rides are aged 65 and older. Well, you’d be half right…about half of them are older, and the other half are surprisingly young people, younger than 35 by the look of them.
Not very long ago, this would have bothered me. I would have thought, someone so young should not be riding an e-bike when they can muscle through on a mechanical bike. But really, who am I to judge? Who’s to say they don’t have an injury or debilitating illness? Who’s to say they don’t intend to get into “regular” riding shape but want to get involved in some longer rides in the meantime?
Also, just for the sake of argument, let’s assume none of those things are true of the young people riding e-bikes. Let’s assume they are healthy, energetic, and perfectly capable of riding a regular mechanical bike in the organized ride…they just prefer an e-bike. Would they be wrong to ride an e-bike? The answer is no, they wouldn’t be wrong…and the answer should never be yes unless you’re Amish.
E-bikes represent the current state of available bicycle technology. The mechanical bikes I ride represent what was cutting edge technology about 20 or so years ago. If someone from 1970 looked at my bikes and declared that they were too “easy” to ride or that I was “cheating” by riding them, I would scoff. So who am I to say those same things about people who ride e-bikes? It’s just a newer technology applied to a two-wheeled vehicle that is (at least partly) people powered.
I hope I live long enough to see what the successor of the e-bike will be. Will it be able to hover? Will it sense hazards (such as cars) and be able to evade them? Will it be able to “train” its human rider, knowing how much resistance to apply to give the rider the best workout possible without overtraining? And most importantly, will people riding the “old” e-bikes judge the riders of these future bikes harshly? My answer to that question is I hope not, but probably so.
Bike Newbie 