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Attached, a Slovenian soldier on a modern eMtb with full suspension, from an article by a Slovenian Officer in the Austrian Truppendienst about the NATO Mountain Warfare Center of Excellence


If...

Obviously I have no idea but some basic thoughts:

1) Overall China is by far, far, far the biggest producer and consumer of ebikes and e-scooters. Almost all is focused on city transport. Mainland...

A friend of mine in the voluntary (but well trained and prepared) Alpine rescue community has told me that an increasing number of teams are using ebikes with success. In some cases it is an official...

As much of this thread is about technological aspects I think it is important to point out the key implication of the paper on bicycle patrols: It's mostly not about biketech but about thinking...

Just as short (tech) update:

1) Mighty Shimano enters the e-mtb engine market. A bit more info, arguably the best is in German. Seems to be step forward in terms of weight (almost 1kg less], size...

Bogus is rather a strong word. ;)

I generally try to keep it short for time reasons and out of want to avoid tedious repetition. Sometime that makes it less clear than it could be.

The...

The big big drawback of every battery-powered electric vehicle is well, the fact that it is battery-powered. A battery has a dismal energy density compared to gasoline, which makes it in general...

It is now 2016 and from my limited perspective I see several trends:

1) The arguably trend-setting and most high-end European market is still growing a great pace, roughly 25%.

2) Speed...

A year on and with a considerable amount of miles helped in part by an electric engine I it is time to look at the bigger economic picture.

1) In the EU, the key driver of high-end market, e-bikes...

I did some additional research before the second run in Vail. Personally I still think that those guys have the best way to descend on snow but there are some interesting fatbike tests from Norway....

Last year I was mostly switching between a 29er fully with rather wide 2.4 tubeless tyres and my older 29er hardtail with a bit narrower ones with one or two rides with an older 26er ht thrown in....

To sum it up for now:

Technological advances could make bicycles in new forms attractive for some armed forces for some niches in some conflicts - or not.

As discussed the electric bicycle undergoes rapid developments but has already become a mature technology used around the world with a strong industrial base. The rise of the ebike used for trail fun...

They certainly want to. Praise capitalism and the (mostly) free market economy. :D

After that long period monopolized by the 26", which saw (very) considerable progress in pretty much all the...

I think that you are rightly pointing out the biggest problem for the use of bicycles by the Western infantry: the heavy load carried by the soldiers. Bikers of all sorts are well-known to be often...

@Biggus and WGEwald:

Chinese eBikes might not be as sophisticated as some of the Western stuff shown earlier even if it's components are largely produced there and other Asian countries. However...

I had my fair share of fun over the last months with a 29er hardtail with a Bosch 250w crank drive motor. Usually it is said to be 'ganzo' or somewhat of a 'tractor'. It is rather impressive how it...

1) So why might electric-assisted bikes be a good idea for some niches?

It is of course difficult to imagine a whole company of light infantry biking from A to B as happened a hundred years ago....

Bicycles have been popular vehicles after quick technological progress in the decades before 1900. Military forces adopted it to give infantry a relative cheap way to move quickly over longer...