Dear Strava Leadership and Product Development Team,
As electric mountain biking (eMTB) and Ebikes continue to skyrocket globally, a massive segment of your paying subscribers is left asking a pretty basic question: Why are we (eMTB & Ebike riders) still locked out of the core features that define the Strava experience?
Specifically, we want to know why Strava refuses to add—or even explain the absence of Local Legends, Ebike specific Challenges, and Best Efforts for Ebike activity types.
Whenever this comes up in the community forums, the standard answer is that keeping motorized and non-motorized rides separate is a matter of leaderboard integrity. We completely agree with that boundary. We don't want to mess with traditional leaderboards. But the features we are asking for exist within an entirely isolated Ebike ecosystem and have zero impact on traditional cycling metrics.
Here is why the current lack of support frustrates us, and why the arguments against adding them just don't hold up anymore.
Local Legends
Excluding Local Legends from Ebike activities makes no sense. By definition, a Local Legend crown isn't awarded to the fastest rider on the trail; it’s awarded to the person with the most grit, consistency, and dedication over a rolling 90-day window.
Because Strava already completely separates Ebike segments from standard bicycle segments, the power output, motor tune, or battery capacity of an eMTB is totally irrelevant here. If an Ebike rider tackles an Ebike-specific trail segment more times than anyone else in their local community, why don't they get the crown? Denying us this feature strips away a massive layer of personal progression and the friendly neighborhood competition that regular mountain bikers get to enjoy every day.
Challenges
While we completely understand why Ebikes are filtered out of traditional cycling challenges to keep athletic competition fair, leaving Ebikers with an empty challenge tab is a huge missed opportunity to keep us using the app.
We aren't trying to take anything away from human-powered milestones. Instead, we just want different, dedicated challenges built for our own ecosystem. Please, give us Ebike-specific consistency goals, distance challenges, and climbing milestones. Give us a reason to actively engage with the app's community features every month instead of looking at a blank page.
Best Efforts
There is also no technical reason to withhold "Best Efforts" tracking from the Ebike interface. Tracking a rider's longest ride, biggest single climb, or maximum elevation gain is an individual, personal record.
Strava’s system already successfully categorizes and separates data by activity type. Extending Best Efforts to Ebikes doesn't disrupt standard cycling records at all; it simply provides us with the essential statistics we need to monitor our own physical progression and equipment efficiency over time.
The Bottom Line
Us Ebiker’s are not asking to compromise the integrity of traditional cycling leaderboards. We respect our traditional mountain biking friends and want to preserve their hard-earned accomplishments. These three missing features wouldn't interfere with them in the slightest.
What we are asking for is simple feature parity within our own sandbox.
Adding Local Legends, tailored challenges, and personal best milestones to the Ebike activity class doesn't dilute the Strava brand; it fulfills it. It provides premium subscribers with the gamification and statistics we are actively paying for.
We love your platform. We want to use it to its full potential. We respectfully ask that Strava either share a clear product roadmap for the e-cycling community or provide a transparent, detailed explanation as to why these features are being withheld.
Sincerely,
