{ BIKE COMPARISON }

Trekking bikes are one of the many cat- egories of bicycles and e-bicycles that flourish in Europe that are small to almost nonexistent in North America. Trekking bikes are designed for serious travel and adventure riding and are usually spec’d with front suspension, fenders, lights and a rack.

A prime example of e-bike trekking would be the Australian couple ( www.ebikecycletourists.com) who recently completed a 22,000-kilometer world-record e-bike trip on two 2015 Haibike Xduro Trekking bikes—bikes very much like the Xduro Trekking RX being compared to the Sduro Trekking RC in this test. For 18 months they traveled with no support vehicle, camped almost exclusively and cooked their own food, so they carried luggage on each bike, and each towed a trailer weighing up to 80 pounds.

Frankly, few of us will ever use a bicycle for extended self-sufficient travel like those adventurous Aussies, but quality traits add up to a good trekking mount and make for a tough, able, well-equipped, general-purpose road and adventure bike. Haibike’s double line of cycling products gave us an opportunity to compare two equal-spec’d Trekking models while simultaneously contrasting the Bosch Performance Line and Yamaha PW-System powerplants on the road.

CONTROLS AND MODES

While the Bosch is now familiar to us, it still remains impressive with 60 N/m of torque. Bosch’s Intuvia display provides a stunning amount of information at your fingertips. The display is easy to read, and provides the usual bicycle computer functions, in addition to showing battery state of charge and the current assist level. Pushing the info button displays ride time, average speed, max speed, estimated range on this battery charge and trip mileage. Your choices of assist are eco, tour, sport and turbo. There is