Why We Love E-bikes on Strava

[Jane]

Hello Everyone. I’m Jane, I work at Strava, and I love e-bikes!  Today we’re going to talk about why e-bikes are so great, the best way to use Strava with an e-bike, and lastly, chat with Mona and Erika, both Strava employees and e-bike enthusiasts. Before we jump into any of that - let’s talk statistics. According to statista.com, the global e-bike  market in 2021 was worth more than $26 billion and is forecasted to roughly double by 2027.

E-bikes are becoming increasingly popular worldwide. 

We’re also noticing that more Strava members are using e-bikes. The share of cyclists on Strava with an e-bike ride increased 26% in 2022 compared to 2021.  Europe in particular, is embracing e-bikes. So what’s the big deal? Well, e-bikes have a number of benefits.  Benefits of E-bikes: *Convenient Commuting The pedal assist and increased speed makes e-bikes an excellent option for commuting or just helping you get outside to move your body. *Customizable E-bikes can be designed and set up for a number of functions. Hauling cargo, transporting kids, participating in gravel or mountain bike rides - e-bikes can do it all.

*Improving Accessibility E-bikes allow cyclists of varied skill levels to be able to participate in cycling! The pedal assistance is easier on joints and muscles especially on hills or difficult terrain. *Going the Distance With extended range, e-bikes offer cyclists the ability to experience more trails or hard to reach destinations, or push themselves harder. They provide a way for cyclists to continue doing the sport they love through all stages of life, from pregnancy, injury recovery, or just the need for a change of pace.

We welcome e-bikes and their owners on Strava. Here are some things to be aware of when you record and upload your e-bike rides to Strava:

E-bike rides have their own activity/sport type on Strava. You’ll want to ensure all your e-bike rides are categorized correctly. 

• One way to do this is to record with a device or app that supports recording in e-bike mode, since these will automatically sync to Strava as e-bike rides. 
• Recording with a device that doesn’t yet support e-bikes? No problem, simply record in “Ride” mode and change the activity/sport type to "E-Bike Ride" after the activity syncs to Strava.

 

Making sure your e-bike ride is set to the proper sport type ensures it matches with e-bike segments only, and will not appear on standard ride segment leaderboards. 

Pro Tip: 

Is your e-bike ride getting flagged before you have a chance to change the sport type? Do you sometimes get busy and forget to change your ride to "E-Bike"? Consider updating your privacy settings so that your newly uploaded  activities will be visible only to you. 

This will give you time to go in and update the activity to an "E-Bike Ride" without worrying that it accidentally matches standard ride segment leaderboards. Once you've updated the sport type, you can then make your activity visible to Followers or to Everyone – or keep it set to just you.

What kind of apps and devices work best for e-bikes on Strava? 

• Many platforms – including Garmin, Wahoo, Apple Watch, Wear OS Watches, and the Strava app – allow you to record in e-bike mode.
• Some e-bike brands have an app that you can use to monitor your bike and track your rides, as well as automatically sync those rides to your Strava account.
• We are continuing to work to add integration for more e-bike brands that can record a wide variety of data like power, cadence and can connect to other sensors/devices. 

  

Let’s chat with Mona, Strava employee and e-bike enthusiast! Q: Hi Mona, what motivated you to get an e-bike? I got my first e-bike during 2020 after my friend let me ride theirs, and it was suddenly like I had gotten back all my confidence in riding again for the first time since I was back in college! I felt safe enough to ride in bike lanes on the street and trails without feeling like I was getting in the way or worrying as much about cars trying to get around me. The biggest benefit is that it allows me as a disabled cyclist to be able to ride again with confidence, and it made riding accessible for me again and that was truly freeing!  Q: How much do you ride it? During the summer and fall I try to get out for a ride every day while the trails are cleared from snow and ice.
	Q: Do you use it when you might otherwise use a motor vehicle? I am fortunate enough to live in a place where I can ride from my home to the office completely on bike trails. I will often commute on my bike in the summer and can get to the office faster than I would be able to drive during peak commuting hours. Q: What about battery life? I get about 40 miles with high pedal assist on a full charge.
Q:  What’s the best thing about having an e-bike? It allows me to move my body and get outside without having to feel self conscious that I am being too slow on the trails and on the street.  Especially working at Strava I am surrounded by a ton of super amazing cyclists, my e-bike allows me to join rides with my colleagues around town.   Thank you Mona for chatting with us!

Next up, meet Erika, Strava employee, Mom, and all round cycling fan.

What Motivated you to get an e-bike?

When I was pregnant with my first daughter, I didn’t want to take time off the bike but let's be honest, it was getting more difficult to keep up with my husband and have the ride still be enjoyable. So I got my first e-mountain bike in 2017.  I rode the bike all the way up to my due date and then was quickly back on the bike once I was cleared by the doctor. The e-bike was a great way to slowly ramp back up! Now we both have e-bikes and I added a road/gravel e-bike to the mix too, which I use to tow TWO kids or go on longer adventure rides. The e-mountain bike has been great for pushing me to my limits in the mountains and getting up those challenging climbs at altitude that I may miss out on under my own power.

How much do do you ride it?

Every time I’m with my kids, it is primarily on an e-bike.  I'll ride an e-bike to the mail box or park. Anything local (within 10 miles) the e-bike is a great option.

Do you use it when you might otherwise use a motor vehicle?

When it was just the two of us, we used human power bikes for everything. Even for 25+ mile commutes. Now with kids, the e-bikes are a game changer. I’m hoping we have a cargo bike in the future but we don’t live in a huge cycling community, so the street safety is still a concern with little ones.

What about battery life? Extended range is the way to go, otherwise we still get some good distance on our bikes: E-MTB 5hrs (50-60 miles) E-Road 4hr (80 miles) add another 50% if you have a range extender What’s the best thing about having an e-bike? I can go further and still have fun. And it didn’t mean I had to slow down during pre-and post pregnancy. And now it is all about getting to share the excitement for bikes with my girls. They love when we ride our ‘fast’ bikes.

If you have any additional questions for Mona or Erika, or want to share your own e-bike experiences or adventures, drop us a reply to this post. We would love to hear from you!

E-bike activities are not eligible for all challenges on Strava, but we do regularly host challenges where e-bike activities are eligible. For example this challenge which runs March 4-24, 2023.   The best place to confirm eligible activity types is on the challenge pages themselves, in the eligibility rules and details.

Have a great idea for an e-bike related feature on Strava? Review our idea submission guidelines and then jump over to our Ideas Board to submit your idea. 

[Jules1]

While I understand there needs to be some separation between the efforts of E-bikes and non E bikes I don't think you've got this right Strava.

I see no reason to have a paid subscription to Strava when, with an E-bike I would need to re-write all the 100's of segments I've ridden on around my home district because we're supposed to start a new category from scratch.

In addition there's no way to compare the rides I'm doing now with anything I've done in the past.

It would simple for you to add an "E" somewhere in the ride description just as there's now a lightning flash for people using a power meter.

Given a year's subscription is now a whopping $99 it's just not worth it for the data we don't get.

Could you please re-think this Strava?

regards

Jules

[CarlosChacon]

Ok, I love Strava and I show it by being a “premium” subscriptor, but this post is surprising and even hurtful.  Strava has actively discriminated e-bike riders in all aspects: segments, ride types, challenges… I just rode a 120km race and my only option is “commute”? And the ride accounts for nothing to challenges?  Guys, you need to get better at this.  The platform accomplishes so much, but in a world were us the 50 plus people do sports, you need to make sure inclusion is more than a nice word to throw around.  I want to be able to mark my UCI-Sanctioned event as a Race, not as “commute”!

[Manymotors]

I have been riding/racing for 60+ years and I am very competitive with riders younger than me. So, I dominate my local age group segment boards. It takes a lot of hard work and training to do so. BUT, e-bikes post their segment times and take over leaderboards especially in the older age groups. They post times that are sometimes on the 75+ boards that are faster than local pros. Strava does nothing. I have tried to flag them (a laborious process) without any response from Strava that the offending times have been removed. Some are several years old. It may not be a big deal unless you are an older 70+ athlete where most of the age group offenses occur. I have nothing against the idea of e-bikes for getting people out riding but Strava does nothing to police them. A lot of their users know they are posting and are belligerent about it. I have even messaged some of them only to get responses of mind your own business. So where does that leave me …. I hate the fu**ing things.

[Jules1]

As a 77 year old Stravarian who now rides an E-bike I sympathize with your concerns Manymotors. There have always been cheats and E-bikes do make it too easy for those who don't record their rides as E-bike rides.

I don't agree with the idea the topic heading here "Why We Love E-bikes on Strava".

The decision by Strava to not allow existing segments to be part of the E-bike ladders has left E-bike riders with no segments and nothing to compare their rides to. I've created a number in the area I ride in but really I'm just riding against myself because Strava just haven't done anything to encourage E bikes.

I've found Strava quite active in removing fake rides, though I suppose it's harder to be definitive about E rides than it is where someone has done a segment in a car.

So my point here is, if Strava made E-bike ladders more challenging, it might reduce the number of cheats by inspiring them over to real E-bike rides.

[CarlosChacon]

I do not disagree with Manymotors about people recording rides on e-bikes as if they were regular bikes, that is a side-effect of Strava’s lack of interest in giving e-bikes an appropriate separation.  
As an e-bike rider I really do not care about regular segments (I create my own for e-bike) and I could not care less about leaderboards, I just want to ride!  What really upsets me is the Challenges not taking into account the rides… most if not all the challenges exclude e-bikes and posting like a couple that have counted them in a period of two or three years is not going to make me change my mind about this. Strava needs to be more proactive and inclusive. Period.

[MvS]

The poor integration of e-bikers is leading to quite a few of us still competitive normal bikers getting disenfranchised with Strava and its value. We used to enjoy hunting out the top 10 on our local MTB rides but now its just a sad waste of time as almost all the leaderboards for MTB climbs are full of e-bikers.

Occasionally someone will take an interest and purge out as many e-bikers as they can using the flag function but Strava restricts this to around 5 flags then locks it so we gave up flagging the rides as well

so the question is do we continue our subscription?

do we even bother with Strava?  I guess it's become a bit of a social connection/media thing with photos and all so that might keep it alive but not the cups and Koms anyway. That's dead now.  Leaderboards etc are becoming worthless. 

And it's all due to lazy e-bikers not bothering to use the e-bike setting.  

Sad.

[Jules1]

"do we even bother with Strava?"

Given the advances in Garmin and other sport watches and given a KOM or QOM is out of the reach of 99.99% of Strava users, I'd say the answer is no. Strava needs a re-think. It was great 10 or more years ago but it's a bit tired now and there's huge amounts of really useful training information available from other sources.

[ponley]

I have no problem with e-bikes, My girlfriend has 3 of them, she also has 2 total knee replacements. The bring riding into reach for many who would otherwise be left out. I do have a problem when I lose my KOM on a segment with a 13% grade to an e-bike. There are a lot of e-bike riders on this thread who are calling those of us who are losing KOMs elitist or ablest but I'm sorry, I'm 62 years old and have spent 30 years developing my strength and skill, That said there is no way that a pro level rider can compete with the current crop of e-bikes on a climb. This renders the leader-boards completely useless. E-bike vs conventional bike, completely unfair, 250W ebike vs 750W e-bike, completely unfair. The leader boards should be for conventional bikes and e-bikes should have their own boards. The current leader-boards have gender and age categories and the ebike leader-boards should have power and class categories but the two should not be shown together.  Strava began 15 years ago and has steadily added features over that time. E-bikes came into their own several years ago so to expect that strava would have had time to implement all the same features for them in such a short time frame is unrealistic. There are tools available for the e-bike riders to flag their bikes as E-bikes and that excludes them from the regular leader-boards. Some e-bike riders are using those tools, others are not. I like others have begun to question the value of a paid subscription so that I can have my efforts wiped out by a 10 year old on an e-bike. I recently lost one of my KOMs to a rider with 2 rides on strava, one of those rides was named "Range Test". 

Strava has long deleted rides from leader-boards that were doctored by software that increased the speed. If e-bikes are allowed to share the regular leader-boards then as a 62 year old should I be allowed to use said software to handicap my ride speeds by say 10%. Sharing the leader-boards is like racing a go-cart heads-up against a Ferrari. 

[ddcb]

I agree with many of the bike riders on Strava regarding E-bikes and leaderboards.  I've come to the point when viewing some of my friends rides (Who are E-bikers) getting QOM's and KOM's and trophies when I know they ride an E-bike.  And like ponley, I am a 72 year old female with one knee replacement and the other needing one; I work hard to be strong and fast.  Not to diminish the efforts of an E-bike rider.  They SHOULD have their own Leaderboard and Strava should work to create the things they have requested regarding segments. And why limit how many times we can flag known cheaters?  It's clear if they are riding the speed of a pro at 60, 70, etc. it's cheating.  Stop being lazy Strava, it's not rocket science. It's simple programing.  I am a paid subscriber.

[Jan_Mantau]

@ddcb EBikers have their own leaderboards since 10 years. Additionally to flagging activities you could comment the activities of people to get them to change the activity type and if that doesn't help you could report them to Strava.

[ddcb]

Thank you.  That was unclear to me.  I just don't understand why some don't use their own leaderboard.  When I get booted off a QOM or loose a trophy place and it's someone I know rides an E-bike it's a little perturbing.  

[ponley]

There are a number of things that strava COULD do but they are too busy adding bling to the app. For instance, a member is limited to flagging 5 rides, How about when a rider flags a ride for incorrect activity type strava moves ALL that riders activities to the correct type. If the rider rides both e-bike and regular bike it is the offending rider that must get his/her regular bike rides reclassified. By simply shifting the effort to the offending rider you would effectively provide the motivation to properly classify ones rides correctly in the first place. That would require effort on strava's part though, why bother when you can get the riders to do all the work for you.

Note to strava, I was a paid subscriber, the only reason was the leaderboards but with you having made them useless by this very issue I am no longer a subscriber.