Electric Boogaloo

For a few years now I've had a thought in mind to dip my toes into the world of e-bikes. I had considered two avenues I could take on this.

On one side, I could get an eGravel bike. Gravel bikes really excel at all-day, long-mileage, lots-of-climbing adventures, and having electric assist can really help stretch those miles out. Plus, they're very well suited to daily office commuting duties, which also benefits greatly from electric assistance.

On the other side, I could get an eMTB, specifically a big burly long-travel suspension one. Mountain bikes, despite their nomenclature, are a bit of a slog to pedal up hills on, especially when you get into the ones built beefy enough to survive big hits on rough terrain. One of the things that's slowed down my progression with mountain bike skills is the fact that after doing 2k to 4k feet of climbing, I'm kind of toast and done for the day, which translates into 1 or 2 runs on a trail like Flow in Demo. Being able to do more full runs, or even having the extra energy (in battery form) to climb back up and session sections would give me a lot more practice.

But then the apocalypse came. That put an end to me commuting to work, taking one point away from the eGravel option. Then last year I dropped the cash to buy myself a regular analog gravel bike (which I enjoy greatly), and that put the eGravel option solidly into the "mostly redundant" category.

So an eMTB is a done deal, right? Well, not so fast. eMTBs (and quality e-bikes in general) cost a pretty penny, and the technology was, and is, still moving pretty fast. That provided ample amounts of excuse for just sitting back and waiting things out.

For context, a nicely specced eMTB will generally cost in the neighbourhood of $8-$10k, whereas a comparable analog MTB might be around $5500-$6000.

But then this happened.

And shortly afterwards, this happened.

Wait, hang on, something's missing. Let me try that again.

There we go, that's much better. But, the sacrifices I made...

That's a lot of dust.

Anyway, what we see here is the Specialized Kenevo Expert, a top spec eMTB being sold for the price of a plain old analog MTB. it's about as big and burly as you can get without going all the way to a dedicated downhill bike. In fact, in this build it's basically considered a "Mini DH" since it has a dual-crown fork out front (which is designed to be extra rigid and durable for taking hard hits), but still has a full range drivetrain (DH bikes usually only have the fast gears, since they're only ever pointed downhill).

This is pretty much an ideal addition to my stable of bikes, since it sits as far away as possible from my other bikes in terms of spec. It has 180/180mm of travel (front/rear) compared to 140/130mm of Crimson Ghost, and is a long, stretched out medium-sized frame vs the compact, nimble small-sized frame of Crimon Ghost. These two aspects, the long cushy suspension and its long, stable wheelbase let it glide smoothly through the dirt like a canoe.

Thus I named it "Dirt Canoe".

So as should be obvious from the photos above, I have of course taken this bike out on is maiden voyage. For this, I chose to ride one of my usual morning routes, where I ride up Kennedy until the 45 minute mark, then turn around and ride home for a roughly 60-70 minute ride. On Blackbirb, my XC MTB, it looks roughly like this. On Dirt Canoe (in Eco mode, mind you) it looks like this.

The reason I chose this route is that it's essentially a fixed-time ride rather than fixed-distance. Obviously riding the same distance/elevation on an e-bike will take less effort and energy and go faster than riding that route on an analog bike. What I wanted to know was whether spending the same amount of time in the saddle would result in the same workout.

And the answer? Within the limits of measurement error, the average power and calories burned were basically identical. You can get the exact same workout on an e-bike, hour per hour, that you can on a regular bike.

And for the data-obsessed, that ride ate up about 25% of the battery; I started around 90% and got down to 65% when I rolled back home.

I'm planning to do another experiment like this with the bike in Trail mode, and in Turbo mode. I expect the results will be largely similar, though if anything unexpected comes up you can look forward to a blog post about it.

Anyway, the bike did a splendid job on the way up the hill, as well as on the way down.

Despite the fact that I forgot to drop the tire pressure back down to a sane level after setting them up tubeless. The gravel buzz I was feeling started to make a lot more sense when I realized I was running 40psi instead of 20psi.

And even with the electric assistance, it's a long slog to climb that high up into the hills, but once you're there the views make it all worthwhile.

I think it's safe to say that this bike will fill an important spot in my lineup. It's going to be great for doing laps to hone my MTB skills, it's going to be great for riding around doing street view collects with my 360 camera, and it's going to be great for just doing long adventure rides out in the sticks. Crimson Ghost will still have its use on trails where the limited steering angle and long wheelbase of Dirt Canoe would make things awkward, as well as any place where eMTBs are excluded from the trails, and of course Blackbirb, The Stig, Purple Haze and Dirty Dozen still have their usual roles.

I'm not gonna sugar coat it: $5800 is still a bit of a dent in my wallet, but I think it'll be worth it.