With all the outdoor gear at this show, it seems a shame that we have to spend so much of our time scurrying around inside fluorescent-lit convention halls. That’s why I was thrilled to get off the Vegas Strip for a little bit for a Bosch test ride with about a dozen different Bosch-powered electric bikes from several different brands that use the company’s electric drivetrains, including Riese & Muller, Gazelle, Trek, and Tern. I joined a group of journalists at Red Rocks Canyon National Conservation Area just outside the city.
The theme was Bosch’s e-cargo and SUV bicycles (I was on a Trek Fetch+ 2, although I did take turns on several other rides). Probably the most noteworthy update to the Bosch eBike system that I discovered was the Auto eShift system, which automatically adjusted the power output to maintain my level of effort and speed. It’s amazing but takes some getting used to. I stopped on an uphill to put my phone back in the mount and was shocked to find how easy it was to get restarted; I also found myself fiddling with the shifting a lot, because I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t hard to pedal up a trail with 1,100 feet of elevation gain.
The integration with the updated Bosch eBike Flow app was also pretty nice. I connected my bike to the app and mounted it on the handlebars, which charged my phone with the bike battery. Buttons by the handlebar let me easily flip through the screen, and the app is also compatible with other major health and fitness platforms and equipment—you can export data from the Bosch app to Apple Health or Strava, for example. Given all the software upgrades, it was difficult to concentrate a lot on the bikes themselves.
It’s worth noting that I’m fine with any and all software updates, as long as the experience of biking remains the same: completely fun, whizzing up and down through picturesque hills in the desert sun. There were definitely stray yells and whoops as we sped along, and not all of them were from me. At one point during the ride, Bosch general manager Claudia Wasko turned to me with a big grin and said, “This is working!” And that’s it! The most fun work possible.