FAQ: Can I go touring on my E-bike?

You definitely can! Lots of people take their ebikes away on holiday with them, doing rail trails and even some month-long missions. The main thing you have to considering is staying on top of your battery levels.

Most people who go touring on their ebikes do so on a hardtail mountain bike, as this would give them a good balance of capability as well as comfort for mixed terrain riding. This also gives you the option to run a rear rack with panniers on the back if need be. However, if you're not a fan of high top tubes, we also have step through hard tail mountain bikes available too. There are handy extras of touring with a ebike as well, such as being able to charge your phone and power your lights through your bike's battery and getting a Bosch display that has mapping capablities built into it.

If you're just wanting to go touring on cycle trails, and only doing 40 to 50 kilometers a day, you should be able to do so on most of our ebikes. The Moustache Xroad's are a perfect bike for this, since they have a larger than average 65 watt hour battery, which can do 70 or even 90 kilometers a day if you're economical with it. 

If you're wanting to do more long distance tours you might want to consider a dual battery system from Riese & Müller, which is the best way of significantly increasing your battery capacity. The dual battery system charge and discharge  evenly so that both batteries have the same amount of use, which means they both last better in the long run. Of course it does add a fair bit of weight, but having that weight on the bike rather than in a bag is ideal if you need a second battery anyway. 

If you are wanting to go on some more serious offroad journeys, such as the Old Ghost Road, it is possible but it does make things a bit more complicated. You can do the Old Ghost Road in two days, but chances are that you will use most of your charge on the first day, you will need a second battery since you can't charge at the hut. This means you either have to carry another battery in with you (as full suspension ebikes only come with one battery) or get a helicopter to drop one of for you, along with some beers for you and your mates. So yeah, less obvious of a solution for more serious offroad trips. However, carrying a spare battery is possible, and we even have met a couple who were riding the entirety of the Tour Aotearoa on their Sinch ebikes, carrying a second battery along with them the whole way.

As mentioned above, it's mainly about planning out your trip according to your charges, so every night that you stop you're able to plug the bike in. Some people as if you can charge by solar, and our answer to that is not really at a rate that's useful. People also ask whether you can recharge while you're riding, and this is not possible at the time of writing either. So you do need to plan the stops, but once you've got that sorted, the world is your oyster!

PS: The images above are from a tour that one of our customers went on with his Riese & Müller Superdelite, which you can read about in full here.