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The first sign of the apocalypse


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Yeah, GM is going to bring out an electric hummer.

And then this: https://www.engadget.com/2020/02/02/jeep-e-bike-super-bowl-ad-teaser/

How many bad car brands are going to try to create a mountain bike, only to have them implode in a spectacular bonfire of excess?

I once saw a BMW mountain bike in Taipei and tried to take a picture of it and actually got yelled at. Stop the madness.

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Looking forward to all the "alpha" types showing up at trailheads with eHummers and Hummer emtbs, backpacks stuffed with tactical gear at Walnut. Camo Camelback and all-black cargo shorts and wrap-around shooting eyewear, 5.11 hiking boots, and a Punisher t-shirt are mandatory.

 

Hummer right.jpg

Edited by mack_turtle
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Exactly. 

My biggest fear is that things like this ultimately risk our sport. "Bringing in non-bikers to the sport" is not always the best thing for the sport. If they help bikers who have lost the capability return to the sport, that is great. But if it brings in a bunch of hummer heads that think they can now crush everything, we're all gonna lose some access over time...

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6 minutes ago, AustinBike said:

If they help bikers who have lost the capability return to the sport, that is great. But if it brings in a bunch of hummer heads that think they can now crush everything, we're all gonna lose some access over time...

Agreed. Give humans something that can be used for both good, and bad...and it will get abused most of the time.

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31 minutes ago, AustinBike said:

If they help bikers who have lost the capability return to the sport, that is great. But if it brings in a bunch of hummer heads that think they can now crush everything, we're all gonna lose some access over time...

This has always been my objection to emtbs on trails. Yes, they are great for the former category of rider, but we're fooling ourselves if we think the industry is making enough money on the venture by selling these bikes to that market. I have no data to back this up, but I suspect the market is being driven by the latter customer base- outsider brap bros who do not yet understand the culture and respect the trails. There's no way to gate-keep who is "allowed" to ride what and where, so we have wait out this tide.

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Red Bull Crankworx airtime (😀) on television doesn't help the cause. Red Bull is all about fame and fortune... No matter the cost. You don't see any television mountain bike shows about low-key rides through the quiet backcountry trails — unless its an entertainment documentary type deal that a Crankworx star shows up in, and even then it has the must-have cool jumps and hard riding attitude in it.

Money... Pushing the sedentary lifestyle just doesn't make it. At least, not in the economy of sporting activities, not in eye-ball mass media like television at least. And that's what companies like Jeep and BMW and the like are after... Eyeballs.

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, the owner of Jeep, took in €110.41 billion (euro) in 2018... It's believed that Trek may have hit $1-billion in gross revenue in 2019.

Shoot, the entire global bicycle market size was valued at USD 47.51 billion in 2017... Which is nothing to sneeze at, but that's not even half of Fiat Chrysler.

Eye-balls... If they think it will gain them attention, then they'll have at it. That's just how the folks in capitalism work. And mountain biking, at this time, is trending in the way that grabs the attention of these folk. And the more popular mountain biking gets — which is certainly helped by the urban (and close to urban) trail building efforts of mountain bike promoters — the more these folk will try and incorporate it into their marketing efforts.

Mountain biking has not been an under-the-radar sporting activity for maybe fifteen years now. And the manufacturers, the big guns like Trek and Specialized, they just want it to keep growing. And the more trails built in urban or near urban areas, the more participation from the general public you'll get.

Although the famous movie line, "...If you build it, they will come..." (spoken by Kevin Costner's character in Field of Dreams) is kind of not really true, if you mix in some powerful marketing, it might just happen. And in the context of current building of urban and close to urban trails, and melding this with the marketing of mountain biking, maybe this is proving that line true.

So what now... Stop building urban and near urban trails?

Get mountain bike manufacturers to stop marketing the sport in their effort to grow business?

Might be a bit late for that.

Edited by RidingAgain
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2 hours ago, AustinBike said:

I once saw a BMW mountain bike in Taipei and tried to take a picture of it and actually got yelled at. Stop the madness.

BMW of Austin had a BMW mountain bike on display - since we were dropping many grands on a car, I asked to ride it and they let me. I messed around on one of those fake rocks they display offroad cars on. Kinda fun.

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13 minutes ago, TAF said:

BMW of Austin had a BMW mountain bike on display - since we were dropping many grands on a car, I asked to ride it and they let me. I messed around on one of those fake rocks they display offroad cars on. Kinda fun.

Lol, I would have been all over that too.

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The industry is not even close to trying to market just the dying and decrepit...like me. They are focused on everyone that want's to put in minimal work for the maximum amount of thrill...like me.

Let's face it, there's and untapped market of couch dwelling, beer drinking, ice cream addicts with massive amounts of disposable cash that if romanced with the thought, that by just laying down cash for and eMTB  they can go straight from the fridge, charge up their magical  electron biased miracle machine and turn Walnut Creek into Whistler  downhill bike park.

Like me 🙂

 

 

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1 hour ago, Yosmithy said:

The industry is not even close to trying to market just the dying and decrepit...like me. They are focused on everyone that want's to put in minimal work for the maximum amount of thrill...like me.

Let's face it, there's and untapped market of couch dwelling, beer drinking, ice cream addicts with massive amounts of disposable cash that if romanced with the thought, that by just laying down cash for and eMTB  they can go straight from the fridge, charge up their magical  electron biased miracle machine and turn Walnut Creek into Whistler  downhill bike park.

Like me 🙂

 

 

If they get people off their couches, that is a good thing. It's getting them onto the trails that might not be a good thing. I've been passed by ebikes in places that I was not expecting it. 

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12 minutes ago, AustinBike said:

If they get people off their couches, that is a good thing. It's getting them onto the trails that might not be a good thing. I've been passed by ebikes in places that I was not expecting it. 

I'm probably not riding the common areas for it, but I haven't noticed that many on the trails so far.

What areas/trails are they being used the most?

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1 minute ago, Yosmithy said:

I'm probably not riding the common areas for it, but I haven't noticed that many on the trails so far.

What areas/trails are they being used the most?

Lol, we were doing a Sunday trail work day at Walnut, really muddy that day...and along comes a couple guys on e-bikes zipping right through us as we're fixing what they break.

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