To hell with the internal combustion engine....where's me bike?!

I think mine was 1250 in Decathlon and it's excellent

Every day since September, missed 1 day as I was sick. Charge it in work too. 2k done on it. Lucky enough have a place to bring it into the office so won't be nicked. Have a good set of rain gear and a helmet with a wind viser and your away in a hack.

Came off it once as someone pulled out in front of me. Bike was fine I was broke up.

Fine now, I was in the cycle lane , bike started sliding sideways and suddenly got grip. They did stop to check on me I was mostly winded. Bit of a sore foot, luckily I wear fairly tough gloves and landed mostly on my back pack, nothing will bring back my squashed banana though.

You would be nervous getting back on the horse and I stay out of that cycle lane as it's actually quite dangerous when you really think about the layout.

You should have led with "I work in a bike shop" rather than anything about your hole.

My ebike has 22k km on it since 2018. Bosch gen2 with the original bosch battery which is probably at 60-70% of its original capacity. I had to get the motor rebuilt as the main bearing went at 18k km which is probably way beyond its design limit. I have replaced wear items only to include the crank/chain/cassette and also the rear wheel due to bearing wear. The bike owes me nothing and it has been extremely versatile, the only time I was stranded was when a tyre shredded on me. I would be loath to get back in the car now, only a job change to a location where I couldn't cycle would achieve that.

It's ridiculous that the bike to work scheme only gives an extra €250 for ebikes. My ebike was €3,000, the standard equivalent is €1,500. Yet EVs get well over €5,000 in grants. Not everyone wants a basic bike from Decathlon or Halfords that fits in the €1,500 price range. My bike is a standard aluminium frame, cheap wheels and basic GRX groupset, far from high end. They're just really expensive and the grant doesn't do nearly enough to cover the cost difference of an ebike.

The government would lose out in their sweet VRT and petrol taxes if more of us were on bikes though...

Disgruntled opinions of the grant aside, ebikes are fantastic. I'm 30 and in reasonable cycling fitness but it's a chore of a commute with a lot of long gradual inclines and traffic lights so the ebike takes the sting out of it. Also I'm jealous of people saying they don't sweat, I can't cruise or take it easy on the bike. I average 175-200w/Zone 3 on my commute so still burn 1,000 calories over 35km :)

Yeah the lowest price for a GRX 400 equipped bike I could find is like 2200 quid.

I’d say you’d find the vast majority of people using the scheme will be only using the 1500 and not adding on top of it.

Regarding GRX, when I say basic I'm not saying it's the cheapest as obviously it's above Claris and Tiagra but for the €3,000 I paid it's not like you're getting Ultegra or anything. I'm on a Canyon, Orbea would be a better example, at €2,700 you get Claris 8 speed and mechanical discs. My point is, road ebikes are very expensive if you want something that isn't budget brand with random components.

I think I'm just bad with words. What I mean is, I spent 3k and that wasn't me going out of my way for Ultegra or a carbon frame or anything expensive, just a standard road bike. Certainly not expecting Ultegra at that price!

So while people are happy to spend €1,500 on Decathlon bikes, anyone looking for a proper Shimano groupset rather than random components like a Btwin derailleur and random wheels and tyres is looking at something like the €2,700 Orbea and the grant is just way off.

A decent e-road bike is 4500+ or about a grand more than its analogue sibling.

Quite tempted by one now as well as even if the war in Ukraine subsides, we have crossed a dangerous line and fuel/energy prices may never return to the levels of 2020/21.

My only gripe on e-bikes is that the nice ones you'd actually want to own and use are either too good or not designed to be put to commuting duties. Example - the Ribble e SL Pro or the Bianchi Aria E-Road, beautiful bikes but try a few months of commuting on either and getting the hub motors caked in shite and the frame slurried and you'll soon start thinking "I could have got 3 x Decathlon workhorses for this".

I've seen quite a few 105 builds coming in around the €3k mark in the past few months - and it wouldn't be a case that everything else on the bike was exotic, just farily average mid-range spec that you'd have been expecting to come in sub €2k pre-pando

If you are handy would you consider converting a road/touring bike? I will have to replace the eMTB at some point and am harboring ideas for converting a drop bar touring type bike to create an efficient low drag commuter ebike. The goal being to stop charging the battery in work. Looking at either the Triban rc520 or a Radar Expert as they have relaxed geometry but with drop bars, they also have mech/hyd brakes and clearance for big tyres (2" on the Radar) along with mudguard and rack mounting points. Cost would be about 2k I think and that's without accounting for the grant so probably ~1500quid.

Would be going with a rear hub motor and a frame mounted battery, probably around 17ah but I have seen up to 22ah mounted on a road bike frame. That would be some range!