Playing with an E-bike in St Moritz

For a few days I played with an e-bike around St Moritz and in the process learned that riding an e-bike is intuitive. It’s on hills and when you’re riding into the wind that you feel the advantage of e-bikes.

The trick, with e-bikes is to learn to ride gently. With a road bike and mountain bike you get into the habit of pushing hard. With an e-bike you need to pull back. You need to learn to ride more gently. The more gentle you ride, the less you’re pushing against the motor.

Learning to be Gentler

An e-bike is designed to get you to 25 kilometres per hour and keep you there. This means that once you exceed 25km/h the assistance turns off and you are fighting the motor, and the drag and resistance from the bike. It feels more sluggish and tiring, when you push too far. E-bikes encourage you to cycle at a reasonable speed.

Good Battery Life

The indicator for the battery told me that I had a range of 60km. As I rode for longer the range kept increasing rather than decreasing. I believe that with this bike, rode conservatively you could ride 120 kilometres or more. In theory you could ride around the Lac de Neuchatel or other smaller lakes with ease.

The steeper the gradient, and the faster you ride, the faster the battery drains. The more gentle your ride, the bigger the range.

I tried going up steep gradients, including on loose dirt and it managed with relative ease. This is a belt driven bike, rather than chain driven so the gears were within the hubs rather than outside. The switching, to some degree is automatic according to how fast you ride, and the terrain. This makes the bike easier and more forgiving to use.

Stability

The bike is well balanced, with a low center of gravity. It feels strange to have such a high bike when you stand next to it, but fine, when cycling.

Belt Driven

The bike is belt driven so although you can select five gear settings it also adjusts things behind the scenes so you barely need to think about changing gears. For some this is an advantage.

Plenty of Possibilities

One of the key advantages of an electric bike is that it’s relaxing to ride, compared to a normal bike. You start to pedal and it gets you to the right speed within seconds. After you have reached cruising speed you pedal a little and you’re comfortable.

That you make little effort means that altough you burn less energy at once, you ride for longer, so burn energy for longer. The result is that instead of an exhausting 20 minute uphill ride you ride for four or five hours.E-bikes give you the opportunity for “long cardio” rides.

Dedicated Cycling Paths

One of the key things about cycling in the Engadine region is that there are cycling paths where you can ride, without cars. This gives you the freedom to ride, and feel safe. It proves that my sentiment that there should be a focus on dedicated cycle routes should be expanded. With gravel paths cyclists can go for long bike rides without getting in the way of cars, and vice versa. It’s liberating.

And Finally

E-biking is a nice sport that allows you to explore a landscape without using the car. It’s faster than walking, more versatile than rollerblading, and it’s easy to rent a bike so you can experiment with bikes, before finding the one that fits your needs.