MY $800 ‘02 AUDI WILL OUTLIVE YOUR E-BIKE

In fact, it already has.

So comparing a 23 year-old green Audi wagon to a brand new e-bike is a bit unfair. The point here isn’t to outright take a shit on e-bikes either, it’s to highlight how everything we use on a daily basis has only gotten worse as technology has “advanced.”

Also let’s make something clear, I think e-bikes are awesome. I’ve been the steward of some people’s most memorable outdoor experiences by putting em’ on an e-bike and sending them off into the beautiful wilderness I get to call home. An e-bike has allowed my grandfather to stay active into his 70s and I know many others have similar stories.

But here’s the skinny, they’re the antithesis of why I love mountain biking, and that’s okay. If you’re an ecstatic fan of your e-bike, that’s fucking awesome. If I’m a vehement hater of e-bikes, the same must also be true. For too long have I witnessed the absolute frothing of these two groups to justify one opinion over another. We’re allowed to disagree and prefer different things. That’s why my girlfriend always gets the pickle that comes with my sandwich when we go out to eat. There’s a symbiotic relationship there.

Let’s circle back to the thing I said earlier though, because this got me really thinking about why I really don’t like e-bikes. Because I can’t be a hater for no reason.

The permeation of technology into literally everything I use on a daily basis was inevitable, I grew up with access to the internet and all that came with it. I watched as Facebook and MySpace took over the attention of everyone I knew, and it wasn’t long before there were 20 other ‘social media’ sites with similar premises. I probably spent too much time playing video games and watching YouTube videos, but I also probably spent more time setting up plastic ramps in the middle of the street with the neighbor kids and hurting myself in new and exciting ways. I spent time digging in the dirt at Glen Helen raceway every weekend and fumbling through installing a new clutch in my fathers YZ450F, and I also spent countless hours trying to beat Sephiroth at the end of Final Fantasy VII. I was truly on the cusp of the generational turnover.

When I was young, technology was sequestered to the computer room, or hidden in the magical black brick that was a Playstation 2. Smart phones didn’t exist and you still had to print out the directions from MapQuest. There was still a collective excitement around technology, with every new iPod and Xbox came an uproar of Christmas giddy-ness.

Today I wake up from an alarm app, and anywhere from 10-15 notifications from 12 other apps. My email is an app, my clock is an app, and the blog you’re currently reading is managed through an app. My phone is on me at all times and allows complete unfettered access to what seems like 50 billion different things all at once. It also allows people to annoy me, but phones have done that forever really. Want to buy a refrigerator? It’s got a giant touch screen and 2 apps. How about a lawn mower? Download the John Deere app. All these apps need updates all the time and god forbid you forget one, it just decides it won’t work anymore.

It’s all fucking screens and apps and I think a lot of people in my age bracket are feeling a total technological burnout. Not because apps and screens aren’t helpful sometimes, but because it’s everything, all of the time, and it all sucks now.

My Instagram feed is proportionally more advertisements than it is posts from friends and family. It’s filled with misleading AI bullshit and political propaganda rage-bait to get people like my dad to engage with it. Try to Google something. It’s all garbage ‘promoted’ posts, AI bullshit, and the actual good results (if any) are shoved almost completely to the second page of results. My printer requires a fucking ink subscription, or you can’t use it. Despite ink…being in the cartridges.

Everything is also a subscription now. Netflix used to be this cool idea to kick the cable companies in the nards, but now it has quite literally created a ‘television’ landscape that is far worse than cable ever was. A $150 cable bill sucks, so why not just pay for 8 different streaming services that are $17.99 each, and the price only goes up each year.

“But Landon, you can just pay for what you want! Cancel the ones you don’t use!”

That is exactly why the subscription model works so well. Because it’s a huge fucking hassle to try and manage my 13 different streaming services every month as shows and movies I like shuffle between them all on a monthly basis. So people would rather just pay for them all, or have 10 different friends logins to each service. Either way these companies are laughing their asses off from the top of their gigantic piles of cash.

This sucks.

When the 2002 Audi Allroad Quattro 2.7L Turbo was released on the market, it was cutting edge technology. Adaptive Air Suspension that altered the cars ride height as speed and conditions changed to better perform on different driving surfaces. It was all-wheel drive and boasted a bi-turbo V6 pushing 250 horsepower @ 5800 RPM, and came in a 6-speed manual.

If you look this car up, everything will probably tell you this is an unreliable, problem-riddled vehicle with little to no market value (if you can even find one still on the road). The Air Suspension failed after awhile, and cost a fortune to replace, the turbos would go out due to limitations of engine management, and you have to remove the entire front assembly to do even the simplest repairs in the engine bay, and yet..

I bought one for $800 and at 175,000 miles she’s still going strong. It was well-kept for sure, and it goes without saying that some of the typical problems with the car were addressed before I owned it. The alternator failed on my first road trip in the car, and with a quick swap from a random shop in Los Banos and $1200 it was fixed. So maybe it was a $2000 car…

That’s the thing though. The problems were fixable. One way or another, with new coil suspension, a jumper wire, and proper maintenance this thing is still kicking.

There was a good quote I read once, and I forgot who it’s by and google search sucks so I couldn’t find who said it but,

“The least reliable cars ever built, are being built today”

I think the collective realization that happened a few years ago about ‘planned obsolescence’ told us everything we needed to know. In order for a company to keep making money in this economy, they have to continually grow and produce profits. There’s no room for making a solid reliable product anymore, because people won’t come back and buy another for several years and that’s bad. You need to buy the new thing every year.

E-bikes have been the worst offenders I’ve seen in a long time.

Take a completely reliable product that has a lifespan of 10 years or more, add a glorified laptop battery, and a motor from a Dyson vacuum. Charge $2000 more for it, and when a new motor and battery come out next year, make them incompatible and somehow more expensive, Profit. Because the old guys that have hoarded all the wealth in the country that pull up to your local trails in a $400,000 Mercedes Sprinter with the newest E-bike from some DTC brand, will keep coming back for bigger laptop batteries and better vacuum motors.

How do we make this even worse? Your wonderful adjustable and mechanical gearing is now electronic and has 2 different batteries. You have no choice, the bike doesn’t have ports to run cables. The derailleur will spontaneously fail mid-ride and require a complete replacement because a motion sensor failed. You get that fixed, and then your vacuum motor fails because it uses plastic gears that only last a year since you’re cranking in the 10t on Turbo up UConn. As you’re coasting back down with the equivalent of rocks in your bottom bracket, your Strava app pings you to tell you that you got a PR and you should pay $11.99 per month to share that with everyone.

I know I’m being indulgent in the rant here but come the fuck on. You want to talk about waste? Sustainability? Where are all the e-bikes going to end up once the boomers realize you can’t sell an outdated e-bike with no product support on Pinkbike? I’ll give you a hint.

Credit: REUTERS

Granted that’s a photo from the bike graveyard in China, which exists due to several other circumstances around a failed bike-share program, but it paints the picture pretty well. This could be your backyard in a couple years. With highly flammable laptop batteries to boot. Millions and millions of E-bikes are sold every year. They’ve gotta go somewhere when they’re inevitably obsolete.

I’m not really here to try and make some campaign for the abolition of e-bikes, or even dissuade you from buying one. Like I said earlier I think they’re great for a variety of different reasons. I’m just saying that next time you ride past me at 18mph on an uphill, and expect me to somehow be okay with the fact that I can’t even escape the constant whirring and buzzing and beeping of electronics in the fucking woods, I will be fighting every nerve in my body to not give you the finger.

I won’t give you the finger, because I think there’s more to life and bikes than fighting over whether or not it’s the same workout (it’s not).

I’m out there to enjoy the serenity that only nature and the pain cave can offer, and you’re out there to do the same thing without the pain part of it. I get it, not everyone is a masochist. There’s still options on the market for those of us that want the undisturbed peace of wind through the trees, and bugs in the grass, and tires in the dirt. There’s enough room for all of us if you stop trying to immediately justify your e-bike every time you talk to me. We all know why you bought one.

So will my $800 Audi outlive your e-bike? Absolutely. Should you be worried about that? Probably not, your kids will have to deal with the consequences and not you, after all. At the end of the day, my opinion shouldn’t dictate anything besides what I do. Your opinion dictates what you do. So do whatever you want man.