A great morning ride
Un grand MERCI à Chaudanne Sport, les Traces Vertes et Rossignol pour la journée de découverte de vélo electrique.
After having had a our briefing on the bikes we learned a fair amount. The questions kept coming and Trace Verte and Rossignol were at hand to bring us up to speed with this exciting new addition to the summer ski resort quiver.
We set off, some were more experienced riders than others, but everyone was up for some mountain fun!
The basics
- The batteries last a good 7 hours of riding, which gives them an enormous
range throughout the 3 valley domaine - The batteries charge in 5hrs and last 400 uses (then a new battery is needed at a cost of circa 500€).
- The bikes we rode were endure style/downhill with nice wide tyres and automatic seat droppers for ease of transition between downhill and riding up hill
- The bikes worked on 4 settings of assistance, the electric bike basically assists you as you pedal, there is no throttle as with some bikes. When it gets really steep you easily click on the controller to up the assistance you receive
- There was an easy to read digital display
- There was the standard gear shifting also for variation in terrain
- The bikes we tested can be found here
- The Bikes retailed at around 4.5K€ and a days rental at Chaudanne Sport was around 80€
- The bikes weighed about 25KG
We had a pretty simple ride up to Tueda up and around the refuge du plan and then back to the Chaudanne via the green downhill section. Some of us hadn’t mountain biked for a few years so we kept it cool. Jez who was the most experienced felt that the bikes handled well! We all pretty much got the hang of the combination of gear shifting and controlling the assistance on the first few hundred metres. The controls were very instinctive.
The future
This isn’t a bike review and the reflections on the day for the participants veered more towards future development of this exciting mountain toy in our valley. The introduction of these bikes makes access to the mountain possible outside of the officially sanctioned ski season, they probably give rise to new problems around sharing pathways and downhill areas and ask obvious questions around whether we as a resort will be at the forefront of the development of this sport.
As a resort I think its fair to say we’ve been slower than other resorts to develop a market for Road Cycling and Mountain Biking – is it time we are at the forefront of this exciting new development?
One phrase for me really stood out on the day. The “democratisation” of mountain biking. It allows, like very few sports for the really fit and healthy, unfit, young, old, large and small to equalise their output on a bike at the flick of a switch. Fun for all the family, who can see and experience so much more of the mountain with an electric bike together. If you’re feeling sporty you stay on the « eco » setting (or switch it off entirely!), feeling lazy or you haven’t done much cycling then you’ll be on « boost » a lot more.
The bikes also open up possibilities for travel to work for locals and road cycling the cols that surround us. You control the effort you put in.
In order to develop electric bikes in Meribel, the business community need to come together to decide how best to promote the sport and attract visitors to meribel, to work with the bike brands, to organise infrastructure, to take the lead with the various state organisations (Mairie, Office de Tourisme, Office nationale des Forets/Parc Vanoise etc) and make Meribel the no1 resort for e-bikes.
Richard