The paradox of choice. It is great to have the option to ride a lightweight e-MTB with an itsy-bitsy battery and gentle torque delivery. It’s also sweet to be free to choose a full-power monster that packs maximum watt-hours and Newton meters.
What if you get the wrong one though?
Those with a mild neurosis, like myself, can be wracked with doubt when choosing a bike. Maybe it would be easier to only have one e-bike option on the market. There, that pesky paradox of choice is solved. That’s not how the free market works though. There are abundant choices.
So I decided to test whether it really mattered or not. How annoying would it be to ride a full-power e-MTB while a friend opted for a lightweight configuration? Fortunately, it is doable, but there were two significant, noticeable differences between setups.
Ride 1: Specialized Levo vs. Orbea Rise
My friend Johs is a longtime racer and bike industry guy. We’ve been talking about riding e-bikes for quite some time, and finally our schedules lined up on a perfect Friday in July. Also, I think Johs was a little reluctant to ride because he’s on an Orbea Rise, equipped with a lightweight Shimano EP-801 drive unit and a 360Wh battery. He seemed to think it would be a sufferfest to keep up with me on a Specialized Levo, which is a full-power e-MTB.
To address the first notable difference between our e-bikes, drive unit output, I tuned down the Levo’s assist modes ahead of time, reducing peak power in Eco and Trail modes by 25%. I also took the Acceleration Response from 20 down to zero. My thinking was that giving my bike less punch would match the mellower power delivery of a lightweight drive unit.
Overall, it seemed to work. We rode together at a similar pace all day. I was in Eco mode 28% of the time and Trail 56% of the time, while Johs was mostly in Boost. I only used Turbo a handful of times on tricky technical moves.
However, based on how fresh I felt after that ride, and how Johs seemed a little bit gassed, I’d say next time I would use Eco more often to match his exertion a little better. But it shows how a slower rider could enjoy a day with someone who is fitter if they tailor their respective e-bikes settings to suit their abilities.
Ride 2: Cannondale Moterra Neo LT vs. Specialized Kenevo SL
Unlike Johs, my other friend, Jimmy is way more new-school. He’s been riding mountain bikes for less than 10 years, comes from a BMX background, and (frustratingly) he shreds harder than nearly anyone I’ve ridden with. Pure talent.
We’ve ridden lightweight e-bikes before, including the weekend I spend on a Kenevo SL. This was the first time I brought out a full-power rig to ride with him though.
He outfits his Kenevo SL with a Range Extender battery, which certainly helps a lightweight e-bike compete with full power for range. However, Jimmy also likes to run full Turbo all day, so battery preservation is not a priority.
Similar to the ride with Johs, I backed off the settings on the Bosch Performance Line CX drive unit, bringing the Assist level down one unit in e-MTB and Tour+ modes. I also backed off the Dynamic assist by one unit in Tour+. Again, this is an effort to de-tune the motor’s response and also give it less top-end power to match a lightweight drive.
I spent nearly all of the ride with Jimmy in Tour+ mode, occasionally popping it into e-MTB, but I rarely used Turbo, if ever. Here is where it is nice to have four modes to choose from with a Bosch e-bike, compared to three with the Specialized. You can tailor each one a little more specifically depending on what you need.
As usual, Jimmy dropped me on every descent. And while he’s always very dynamic on a bike, it did seem like his lighter e-MTB was a bit easier to throw around, both in terms of line choice, popping off obstacles, and other shenanigans.
E-MTB Battery Life Comparison
According to bike industry marketing, lightweight e-MTBs have competitive battery life because the overall bike weight puts less demands on the motor, and the drive unit draws less power, since it’s tuned to deliver lower torque. Makes sense on paper, but on the trail, that’s not quite what I saw. Battery life is the second major difference between full-power and lightweight e-bikes.
Here’s what the numbers said after these two rides:
| Full-Power Battery Use | Lightweight Battery Use | Time | Distance | Climbing | |
| Ride 1 | 48% | 60% | 2hr | 16mi | 3,218ft |
| Ride 2 | 27% | 101% (of 130%) | 2.5hr | 13.4mi | 4,595ft |
A few notes. Johs’s Shimano controller only shows five LEDs to indicate battery life, and he was down to two out of five at the end of ride 1. Saying he had 40% remaining is a generous estimate.
The Specialized Range Extender that Jimmy uses gives him 130% total available charge. Confusing, I know. Also, it can cause the drive unit to go into low-power mode when the external battery is almost empty, even if there is a fair amount of available power in the bike battery. He experienced that on our ride too.
Overall, the biggest conclusion is that, when you use assist modes conservatively on a ride, you end up with substantially more battery life on a full-power e-MTB than on a lightweight. Not a shocking conclusion, but it shows the greater versatility of full-power. In modes like Trail and Tour+, you can ride for a very long time, without having to go all that slowly.
Conclusion
It’s absolutely doable to ride e-MTBs of different battery capacities and motor outputs. The differences between full-power and lightweight e-bikes might get a little overblown sometimes. But they exist, and I saw them firsthand on these comparison rides.
The difference in motor output (Nm) is glaringly obvious, but it’s easy to remedy by adjusting the settings on your assist modes, or simply using gentler modes.
The second difference, that of battery life, is not so simple to overcome. If you want to do a long ride with a friend, whoever rides the lightweight bike will be the first to run out of juice, unless your riding styles are really unusual. That’s fine, but it’s a limitation that is unavoidable with a lighter, smaller battery.
As for the ride experience and the fun parts — i.e., the downhills — We can coexist!
P.S. We use affiliate links here at Direct Current. If you’re considering buying a Specialized e-bike, we’ll get a little kickback if you purchase using a link from this story. 😀