u/PradeshPi

I've ridden Yetis for years, and I currently ride a lunch rided 115. Love it.

I'm moving to a new house where I'll have good paved trail access to all sorts of cool stuff, and I will also have the ability to go hit some good trails from those areas as well (this is northwest Arkansas). So I'm considering driving my car less and getting an ebike for transportation purposes. And if I'm doing that, why not get one that can also rip?

So, first off, can a big emtb serve that function well? I'm so used to thinking of big travel bikes as inefficient pedalers that it's sort of hard for me to get my brain around riding 10-12 miles roundtrip on a paved bike path regularly with one, but I see these people out on 4" fat bikes doing it all the time.

The added perk is that I can then pop over to some trail systems that are 5-7 miles from my house and normally would ride a little less often and get a few laps in just for the hell of it.

I'm a Yeti guy and probably always will be, and I've seen some decent used deals on the 160e. I realize it may not have the latest and greatest batteries and motor, but I'm not into the "more power is better" thing. I've never even owned an ebike, so the idea of adding 250-600w to the equation is just mind boggling. I can't imagine needing 1500.

But is the 160e a good option for this? Or should I consider the Specialized or Aventon? I personally love Yeti suspensions, and the bikes are so much fun to ride. But I am open to other options. I really care about handling characteristics, and my trail use would probably be a good bit of blacks at Coler or Slaughter Pen or even the Oz Bike Park. Since my regular ride is an XC/trail bike, I'd probably have fun hitting spicy stuff fast with this.

Thanks in advance.

It seems like a lot of ebikes come with 3"+ tires, but I don't understand this. Riding 3" tires, especially with an aggressive tread pattern, on pavement sucks. It's inefficient, feels sluggish, and uses a lot more power and battery.

Why is this the norm? It can't have anything to do with speed as road cyclists go 45mph+ all the time (especially on descents) on 28-32c tires, and they used to do it on 23c tires and rim brakes.

Also, why do some ebikes come with 1500+ watts of power? The best cyclists in the world can only put out 400-500 watts for an hour. It seems to me that a 500w bike that is designed to be efficient, decently aero and is spec'd with 32-38c tires could weigh around 35 pounds. Using a bike power/speed calculator, we can see that all it takes for a 35 pound bike and 180 pound rider to go 28mph is 550 watts. So if the rider adds just 50 (which is insanely easy), we have our 550.

What am I missing?