More Bikes, and Fun Products

Every year there’s a massive convention of the bicycle industry—Interbike. Interbike has been around for 36 years. A long-time mainstay in the city of Las Vegas, Nevada, the show moved upstate to Reno for 2018, and it was more e-bike-focused than ever. From bikes to e-specific tires and other accessories, there was something e-bike-related in nearly every booth. In fact, it seems that there aren’t but a handful of companies left still holding out on e-bikes. 

There are presentations at every hour of every day—from seminars to discussions on topics from how to increase social media presence to training on best practices in the bike shop. The LAPD was there on Bosch’s stage, talking about how their e-bike program has already increased arrests by 140 percent and dropped response times in the areas where they are deployed. 

“E-bike growth in the U.S. has been 66 percent year over year.”

In one seminar, we learned that e-bike growth in the U.S. has been 66 percent year over year, and that one major bike company found out that though e-bikes were 11 percent of their sales in units, it accounted for 50 percent of their total sales. There’s so much great information, it alone is worth coming to the show!

PRE-SHOW

The precursor to the indoor expo is the Outdoor Demo held in nearby Lake Tahoe at the Northstar Resort. This is where people can ride demo bikes from many different manufacturers. This is also where many dealers come to find the brands they might carry. It’s mountain bike-heavy, but there are all kinds of bikes there—from road to folding to some really unusual bikes. Northstar is a popular ski area in the winter, but they have outstanding trails for mountain biking. 

Whereas there was a nearly hour-long wait at the lift, with e-bikes it was a 10-minute ride to mid-mountain! It’s such a blast, and we had the chance to ride many new bikes we hadn’t yet ridden. Sometimes this job just doesn’t seem like work.

INTERBIKE INNOVATION AWARDS

Every year at Interbike, awards for the best products in the industry are selected. Electric Bike Action, along with sister publications Road Bike Action and Mountain Bike Action, is tasked with selecting the best of the best in several categories. EBA picks two—the best e-bike and the best e-bike product.

By August, we have to receive anything from any company (who must also be registered with a booth at Interbike) that sells e-bikes or products that wants to submit it for consideration. We were flooded with entries at t. Our warehouse overflowed with so much good stuff! It was a lot of work, but a lot of fun to try everything out.

We can only pick one winner for each category, and that wasn’t an easy task. Our final selection was the Pivot Shuttle for Bike of the Year and the Bosch PowerTube battery for Product of the Year. There were some amazing runners-ups for the best bike, like Fantic’s FX-1 Carbon 160 and Bulls’ E-Core, but the Shuttle edged
them out.

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