McClaren's 'world's most powerful trail-legal e-bike' has a problem

electrek.co

There's a big problem with McClaren's 'World's most powerful trail-legal' electric mountain bike

Spoiler: it's only as powerful as the rest of the European government mandated limited bikes at the top of the range.

micromobility - Bikes, scooters, boards: Whatever floats your goat, this is micromobility @lemmy.world

FartsWithAnAccent @lemmy.world

1y ago

There's a big problem with McLaren's 'World's most powerful trail-legal' electric mountain bike

electrek.co /2024/05/20/theres-a-big-problem-with-mcclarens-worlds-most-powerful-trail-legal-electric-mountain-bike/

13 comments

I’m still baffled that the author couldn’t read the brand name on the actual image of the bike in their own article and realize that it’s “McLaren.”
- And it’s not like once or twice. It’s every single occurrence of the name in the article.
  
  Micah is ... well he's definitely not trained as a journalist. Seems like a nice guy, though, and he is enthusiastic about EVs of all sorts, so I cut him some slack.
- I didn't even notice that 😂
  
  I mean, a performance car brand that fields an F1 and Formula E team is fairly recognizable… or at least it should be to an author of an electric vehicle website. 🤦
...and yet, no limits on how fast motorcycles, cars, and trucks can go 🤔
- You're somehow not familiar with speed limits? I'm not in Europe but I encounter people on what amount to electric motorcycles whipping uncomfortably close to me all the time. They should be limited in speed. These mother fuckers are topping 30mph on a trail with pedestrians and it's clearly unsafe
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governor_(device)
- They do.
Is the EU also limited by torque? My bike would be banned in the EU by motor wattage, but these have significantly higher nm of torque compared to mine. Mine is 85nm.
The EU variant appears to be 121nm.
Where is it that something has to be legal for a trail??
- As per the article
  The issue is that for European e-bikes, 250W is the legal limit for both on-road and trail usage. So if you’ve got a 250W e-bike, you’ve basically tied every single other e-bike on the market for highest power. Of course, none of the 250W e-bikes rolling around today actually put out only 250W of power. They all sneak by with higher peak power ratings, but the continuous power ratings are all identical. Thus, claiming to have the world’s most powerful trail-legal electric mountain bike is a bit like claiming to sell the world’s tallest 6-foot ladder.

13 comments