Why we Don’t offer electric bike tours

In the last year we have received an increase in request for e-bike tours. While we don’t have time to summarize why we don’t offer them in a phone call, we decided to share here online where we can offer some detail. Electric bikes have their place…however, for touring New Orleans it may not be the best option. Here’s our polemic:

New Orleans is Below the Sea level:

New Orleans is flat. We use single speed city bikes with a free wheel and hand brakes. They don’t have gears and for touring New Orleans they're not necessary. We often joke and mention that we’re not on the Tour de France, we’re on the Tour de Nola. We’re called the Big Easy for a reason. A nice and easy pace does the trick. Admittedly, if we were giving bike tours in San Francisco, e-bikes would be ideal given the rigourous terrain. In contrast, New Orleans’ highest incline is the humanly engineered levee we ride to get to the river. We go to the river on our Heart of the City tour. The levee is a 5 pedal incline that’s scaled with ease. For 99.9 percent of the Heart of the City’s route it’s flat and smooth sailing.

Electric Bike Tours and Standard Bike Tours are Both Three Hours:

In New Orleans Creole culture we have the folklore of Compair Lapin (Brother Rabbit) an agile trouble maker that bounces from place to place creating mischief. We all know what happened when Compair Lapin challenged Compair Torti (Brother Turtle) to a race. We see this played out everyday with our competitors. A standard bicycle allows one to take in the architecture and ones surroundings at a leisurely pace. When operating an e-bike one’s attention has to be given to the road because of the speed in which the operator is racing down the street. This in essence defeats the purpose of a sightseeing tour, unless focusing on pavement and motor vehicles is the objective.

Before one of our e-bike competitors opened they took our tours to learn our routes and reproduced them. On our route they will in fact fly by us several times only for use to catch up with them. Most of the time we get back to our point of origin before them as well! What’s most important to note is that the standard bicycle tour completes the same route as the electric bike tour in the same 3 hour period. In taking a bicycle tour in New Orleans, slow and steady definitely wins the race.

The Bicycles Origin:

Some of our staffs ancestors came to the New World from the Lorraine region of France. Pierre Lallement, the inventor of the modern bicycle, is from the same region. We take alot pride in this connection with our French heritage. The standard bicycle is our most ecologically friendly means of transport to emerge from the industrial revolution. While electric motors have become popular as a more environmentally friendly option to the combustion engine, the standard bicycle still prevails as the most eco-friendly.

The New Orleans power grid is powered by natural-gas. While charging the lithium battery of an e-bike offsets the amount of energy used to power a combustion engine, it still doesn’t compare to the cleaner energy of the standard bicycle. So come on over, book your ticket, and ride along with us in the way that nature intended for the bicycle to be ridden.