Charles Darwin first used the terms lumpers and splitters, as a way to describe how people naturally categorise things. The idea being that it’s good to have a mix of both – some people to see the bigger picture (lumpers), others to subdivide everything into increasingly small categories (splitters).
Mountain bikers are clearly splitters, as it’s never been enough to just lump all mountain bikes together. Since day one we’ve been subdividing them into different categories: XC, down-country, trail, enduro and DH, then further subdivision by wheel size; 29ers, 27.5in and mullets. So it should come as no surprise that the simple analog/e-bike split was never going to suffice.
So now we have a burgeoning lightweight, mid-power e-bike category. But what exactly is a lightweight, mid-power e-bike? Both qualifiers are important here, so we’ll address
