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The 2021 E-Bike Buyer’s Guide

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The 2021 E-Bike Buyer’s Guide




For the past 25 years, Merle Schloff of Salisbury, Vt., has been organizing what he calls the Tour de Merle: an informal gathering of friends for an all-day one-way mountainbike tour on a combination of forest roads, single track and snowmobile trails through Central Vermont.To get more news about full suspension ebike, you can visit magicyclebike.com official website.

“The first year we did it I was on Raleigh hardtail — no shocks or anything,” Schloff remembers. “When I finally got a mountainbike with full suspension, that was a revelation,” he says. Four years ago, Schloff rode an electric-assist mountain bike on the Tour de Merle. “That was an even bigger revelation,” he says. “Suddenly, there were no more hills. Those parts of the route I used to struggle over, were still hard, but so much more doable.”
This past year, Schloff rode the Tour de Merle with about 20 friends, ranging from his son Jesse, 36, a strong rider, and daughter Pearl, 41, to former bike racers to friends in their 70s. No one got dropped. Schloff, now 70, and five others in the group, were on e-bikes. “The e-bike is the great equalizer. It’s letting me ride longer and farther and to keep riding more than I ever imagined,” he says. He now owns two Haibikes—a mountain bike and a touring bike and he and his wife Kathryn spend weekends touring backroad loops they’ve scouted out on their Delorme Gazeteer. “Now I’m doing 40 miles on roads and trails where I used to only do 20 or 30 miles,” Schloff says.

Whether it’s a mountain bike souped up enough so you don’t have to dab on the hills, a gravel bike that can carry you a few miles farther, or a touring or commuter bike that replaces the car for short trips, the electric-assist bike or e-bike is here to stay.
In 2020, half a million e-bikes were imported to the U.S. — nearly double the amount in 2019. At present, Green Mountain Power and some other utilities are offering rebates on e-bikes of $200. And the E-Bike Act proposed this winter by Democratic Reps. Jimmy Panetta of California and Earl Blumenauer of Oregon could offer a tax rebate up to 30 percent of a bike’s price with a cap of $1500.

“Perhaps the biggest challenge this year is simply getting the bikes – the demand is way up and the supply has been limited by shipping and other challenges brought about by the Coronavirus,” says Matt Nicholas, the owner of Bootlegger Bicycles in Jeffersonville. Adding to that challenge is the fact that many European countries currently have incentives for e-bike purchases in place, further straining the supply.

At Green Mountain Bikes in Rochester, where Schloff bought his bikes, Doon Hinderyckx has been working with and selling e-bikes in various forms for over 20 years. “I used to sell a lot of e-bike conversion kits, but now, the new bikes are so good you really don’t have an excuse not to buy one. They have really come a long way,” he says.

Hinderyckx sold Schloff his Haibikes and also rents e-bikes. “A lot of our customers are doing inn to inn tours but more and more are mountain bikers who want a little help up the hills,” he says. Green Mountain now has a fleet of nearly 50 e-bikes for sale or rent.

Other shops are also seeing a growing demand. “I admit it, for or five years ago we had only two e-bikes in our shop and I thought it was just a fad,” says Dan Rhodes of Bradley’s Ski and Bike Shop in Manchester. Now, Bradleys and many other shops are finding it’s hard to keep e-bikes in inventory. “The thing about cycling is that it’s a social sport. Most people go out and ride with friends. Being dropped or having someone have to wait for you doesn’t feel very good. E-bikes solve that problem,” says Rhodes.
Which Bike?

For many people, the biggest question is which e-bike? With prices ranging from just under $2000 to well over $12,000 there are as many e-bikes now as there are bike models so it’s not an easy choice. “You really need to think about why you are buying an e-bike and where you will use it most and it’s a good idea to try one before you buy,” says Jayne Trailer of Hanover Adventure Tours in Norwich, Vt. “We find a lot of people really want to use them to explore the backroads and tour.”

The Upper Valley bike shop evolved from being a hostel and touring company, to an e-bike rental operation and is now one of the largest e-bike dealers in New England. “We were originally doing brewery and cheesemaker tours by bus but when Covid hit, we switched to self-guided e-bike tours,” she says. The shop loads up the bike computers with maps and you can go out for self-guided tour, with the bike rental, for about $80.
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