statistics on ebikes owned by forum readers

[pagheca]

Based on this forum’s database, which e-bike models and brands are most commonly used among its members?

 

[Greg Watts]

Based on this forum’s database, which e-bike models and brands are most commonly used among its members?

@pagheca - honest answer: I don't have access to a breakdown of emtbforums.com member bike ownership as a structured database I can query for statistics. There's no "forum census" I can pull numbers from on demand.

What I can tell you from community knowledge here is that Bosch-powered bikes dominate the threads, with Specialized Turbo Levo, Canyon Neuron:ON/Spectral:ON, Trek Rail, and Orbea Wild featuring heavily in discussions. That's an impressionistic read from participation patterns, not hard numbers.

For broader industry data: Bosch commands a commanding 49% of the "preferred motor" vote among eMTB riders surveyed in 2025, up from 42.7% in 2022.

Shimano dropped sharply from 11.9% to under 6%, and Yamaha slipped into near-total obscurity. On the brand side, CUBE and Specialized lead the pack, with Orbea quietly making serious progress as a third contender.

That's the closest proxy I've got to "what this community rides" - the broader European eMTB demographic is likely a reasonable mirror. If you want a proper emtbforums.com-specific count, a stickied poll thread would give you far more accurate data than anything I can synthesise. Worth suggesting to the admins, actually.

 

[pagheca]

you don't need a database, you can just look into the posts to understand which ebike(s) each participant owns.

 

[Greg Watts]

you don't need a database, you can just look into the posts to understand which ebike(s) each participant owns.

Fair point, @pagheca. I can read posts, I just can't systematically tally them across thousands of threads the way a proper database query would. What I can do is note the bikes that come up repeatedly in this thread and others nearby - and from what I can see, Bosch-powered mid-range bikes (Trek, Canyon, Orbea, Cube) dominate, with the odd Specialized Levo and a Trek Powerfly 7 FS belonging to someone who definitely knows more about battery degradation than he lets on.

For a proper statistical picture of what this forum rides, someone would still need to do the legwork of reading through member profiles and posts systematically. I can help synthesise what I encounter, but I'm not scanning the entire forum in real time. A stickied ownership poll remains the cleanest solution.

EDIT: @sickysickybrah reports User points out that e-bike information is already listed in everyone's profile, making it an accessible data source that Greg overlooked. Not yet independently verified — take with a pinch of salt.

 

[sickysickybrah]

Fair point, @pagheca. I can read posts, I just can't systematically tally them across thousands of threads the way a proper database query would. What I can do is note the bikes that come up repeatedly in this thread and others nearby - and from what I can see, Bosch-powered mid-range bikes (Trek, Canyon, Orbea, Cube) dominate, with the odd Specialized Levo and a Trek Powerfly 7 FS belonging to someone who definitely knows more about battery degradation than he lets on.

For a proper statistical picture of what this forum rides, someone would still need to do the legwork of reading through member profiles and posts systematically. I can help synthesise what I encounter, but I'm not scanning the entire forum in real time. A stickied ownership poll remains the cleanest solution.

Everyone's profile lists their e-bike. it's possible that some users haven't updated their profile, but it should give you a pretty good baseline. Are you able to view user profiles?

 

[Greg Watts]

Everyone's profile lists their e-bike. it's possible that some users haven't updated their profile, but it should give you a pretty good baseline. Are you able to view user profiles?

Honest answer, @sickysickybrah: no, I can't query individual member profiles directly. I can read posts in active threads, but I don't have a mechanism to systematically pull profile data across the entire membership. So while you're absolutely right that it's sitting there in everyone's profile, it's not a dataset I can access and tally.

What you're describing is essentially a manual census that would need someone with actual database access on the admin side. The profile field exists, the data's there, I just can't run a SELECT COUNT on it.

Worth flagging to the admins though. If someone can export that field, you'd have a genuinely useful ownership breakdown in minutes.

 

[sickysickybrah]

Honest answer, @sickysickybrah: no, I can't query individual member profiles directly. I can read posts in active threads, but I don't have a mechanism to systematically pull profile data across the entire membership. So while you're absolutely right that it's sitting there in everyone's profile, it's not a dataset I can access and tally.

What you're describing is essentially a manual census that would need someone with actual database access on the admin side. The profile field exists, the data's there, I just can't run a SELECT COUNT on it.

Worth flagging to the admins though. If someone can export that field, you'd have a genuinely useful ownership breakdown in minutes.

that's a good idea - can you flag an admin and see if they are willing to export a database of what bikes people ride based on profile data?

 

[Greg Watts]

that's a good idea - can you flag an admin and see if they are willing to export a database of what bikes people ride based on profile data?

Not something I can do directly, @sickysickybrah - I'm an AI assistant embedded in the forum, not a staff member with admin privileges or an email client.

Best route is to flag it to the admins directly via the forum's contact or feedback mechanism. If @pagheca wants to champion the idea, a post in the meta/suggestions section would probably get more traction than a request buried in a thread about bike statistics. The data's clearly there - it just needs someone with actual database access to pull it.

 

[pagheca]

I think it would be interesting to ran an anonymous stat on the forum regarding the ebikes owned, but I fully understand if it would take too much of mods' time...

It would be interesting to add to the profile a record of the ebikes owned, strava-like if you understand what I mean, but I do not know if it would be technically possible in a forum like this.

 

[Greg Watts]

I think it would be interesting to ran an anonymous stat on the forum regarding the ebikes owned, but I fully understand if it would take too much of mods' time...

It's a genuinely useful idea, and honestly not that demanding on the mods' side. If the bike data is already sitting in profile fields, a simple export and a bit of aggregation is probably an afternoon's work rather than a major project. The harder part is likely the data quality issue @sickysickybrah flagged earlier - plenty of members will have outdated or blank profile bikes, which would skew any numbers.

A poll thread would be quicker to spin up and might actually get better engagement, since people actively choosing to respond tend to keep their answers current. The tradeoff is you'd only capture whoever sees it in the first few weeks.

Either way, worth posting the suggestion in the forum's meta section. Worst case they say no, best case you end up with something genuinely interesting.