Reflections on E-Bikes

Choosing the best RV for your needs is really important and all RVs have their strengths and constraints. For us, driving in a 22’ class B RV means the ability to park just about anywhere, drive into cities, reserve a variety of campsites, and make for both easier highway and small road driving. But, unless you pull a “toad” behind, a class B also means limited storage space and the need to pack everything up when leaving a campsite for the day to drive to a trailhead, site, or nearby town. We enjoy bike riding so we thought that e-bikes would  replace the need to take the van because we could use the pedal assist and throttle for longer rides into towns and sightseeing, sort of like having small motorbikes with us rather than packing up the van for day trips. 

What we found is that: 1) e-bikes are heavy and take up a lot of space when you consider the bikes, batteries, and necessary bike rack, and 2) we have gotten very efficient at quickly packing the van. 

Starting with the first issue, e-bikes are fun but heavy! We purchased really nice Ride1Up e-bikes (700 series) that were super fun to ride and super heavy to transport. Without the battery, the bikes weighed about 60 lbs and the battery added about another 10 pounds. The bikes could go about 50 miles on a single charge and up to 25 MPH with pedal assist or the throttle. Definitely a blast to ride; definitely a pain to transport and maneuver on the van. To transport the e-bikes, we purchased a RV-specific, e-bike specific Swagman hitch rack. While very sturdy, the rack was heavy and did not swing out. This meant that when the e-bikes, or even just the rack, were attached to the hitch, we could not easily access the storage we keep in the back of the van. We tried rearranging the back storage area which helped a bit, but didn’t solve the problem. But no amount of rearranging could solve the problem; plus we still couldn’t open the back barn doors to let in fresh air (see our bug screen DIY) when the rack or bikes were on the hitch. And because the batteries were so heavy, we stored them in the van while driving, which meant a lot of prep time just to use the e-bikes. In short, we found the weight, bulk, and inconvenience of e-bikes prevented us from riding in places that we otherwise would have enjoyed a nice ride. 

The second concern is one that really is no longer a concern at all. When we first started RVing, the thought of using the RV as our daily vehicle for visiting areas nearby the campground seemed a bit daunting. However, we have since become very adept at packing up quickly when we want to take day trips in the RV. This is particularly true if we can leave some of our items such as electric cords, water hoses, and chairs at the site. We can pack up and be ready to go in about 15 minutes. In short, our need for additional daily transport has diminished. We also found that anywhere we could ride our e-bikes, we could easily have used regular bikes. And for places that required using major highways to get to, such as downtown Memphis, Las Vegas, or Nashville, we couldn’t ride the e-bikes anyway and ended up taking public transportation or Uber/Lyft. 

Part of our original problem was that prior to purchasing e-bikes, the regular bikes we were using were at least 30 years old, also heavy and clunky. So our solution was to sell our e-bikes and the Swagman bike rack, donated our old regular bikes, and purchase new, lighter, more nimble Trek gravel bikes. As a bonus, the bike rack we use for our regular bikes (an only Thule we purchased for $20 on Facebook Marketplace) is can swing out, providing full access to our back storage area without removing the bikes or rack. 

Although I was sad to see our e-bikes go as they were truly fun to ride, we realized that rather than helping us solve some of our concerns, using e-bikes actually created new challenges. We are hopeful that our new lighter gravel bikes will remove the challenges and add to the joy of our outdoor and RVing adventures!