Fat tire e-bikes… most peoples first response is “what the heck is that?”.
While there is evidence of fat tire “regular” bicycles existing since the early 1900’s, it was the 1980’s where these bicycles started appearing again with any frequency.
Over the last decade or so fat tire “regular” bicycles have started to become more and more mainstream, and not surprisingly the e-bikes industry quickly realized this and started to integrate them into their offerings as well.
To say that fat tire e-bikes stand out and are distinctive would be a massive understatement. The addition of fat tires makes any e-bike look like one of the wildest thing you’ve ever seen on two wheels.
But beyond their ability to stand out as far as their design goes, they offer very specific benefits. Fat tire e-bikes (or fat tire “regular" bicycles for that matter) are great when it comes to off roading or un-even surfaces. The extra dimensions of the tire makes for much better traction and can also tend to offer a smoother ride on those rough surfaces.
Further to this, we as Canadians get another benefit from fat tire e-bikes, and that is their ability to outperform regular sized tire e-bikes in winter on both snow and ice*.
*Now while it MAY go without saying, we’ll still mention that whenever you ride on snow and or ice you definitely need to be more careful… but if you’re so inclined to ride in the winter months an argument can easily be made that fat tires offer far a superior ride than regular sized tires will. Often people will also lower the air pressure to increase the tires ability to grip on snow and or icy conditions.
So now that we’ve discussed their ability to (out) perform regular sized tire counterparts on both rough/ un-even surface as well as snow and ice, you’ll probably wonder how they do on dry concrete?
Probably no surprise, but regular tires and their narrower tire profile will perform better there. Yes you can definitely ride fat tires on dry concrete, but their size creates more friction and can make pedalling more difficult.
Two other factors you should consider is that first, fat tires are more expensive to replace, and second the larger tire size and increased friction will deplete battery levels faster, so you’ll want to factor those realities into your considerations.
But having said all of that if you’re looking for an off terrain or bad road conditions option, a fat tire e-bike just might be perfect for you.