Salsa  Confluence Flat Bar ESSA 8 Electric Bike

There are tons of eBikes on the market. To me most of them are not bikes, they are transportation… things, and they look and ride wrong. No soul and way too heavy. My previous eBike was a conversion kit that I built myself. That bike made me think about the very first motorcycles from the late 1800s that were motorized bicycles. It rode like a bicycle with the bonus of power and range. Being a life-long bicyclist THAT’s what I wanted. This Salsa Confluence is that. It’s got that soul. It handles like a bike and has enough extra juice to keep me going in spite of age and illness, while keeping me pedaling and maintaining strength. All the older bikes in my garage have triple chainrings. As a retro-grouch I indeed scoff whenever I see a single chainring gravel cyclist riding flat terrain spinning at high cadence in their highest gear, going nowhere fast. The drivetrain and electric assist on this Salsa effectively returns what the triple chainring does. Shift into boosted power when you need it in the high or low range to get up hills or gain speed, just like the big ring and granny gear on a triple. Geometry and fit. I’m 6’ 1” tall with a 34” inseam and chose the XL frame size based on REI and Salsa’s online fit calculators. I like my frames bigger and this fits me great. I do believe the L size frame would have also worked great for me. The handling is very stable. This bike stays pointed where you want to go on dirt roads and trails, and cornering at speed. Range on my first few rides has been exactly as advertised at forty miles. The Mahle app gives great data on your power usage and maps what mode you were in along the map of your ride. So I've been riding with no power assist along the flats, and boosting into low when i need a few miles of rest, and amping it up to mid power up a hill. Or if I need to keep up in traffic for safety, mid to sometimes high power for brief periods. If you are already a cyclist with years of managing your own power as the motor of your bike, this is very natural. I do plan on buying the external range extending battery eventually. When riding with no power assist there is a bit of drag, but I’d argue that a loaded touring bike would feel worse. The amount of time that the app shows me I’m spending without any power at all proves it’s no big deal. I cross shopped this with a mid drive Specialized and really disliked it, I swear my road triple equipped bike accelerated faster under my own power. Rear drive electric hub motors are nothing fancy or special but this felt better to me and the quality of the Mahle drive components is apparent. My freight invoice claimed the weight at 33 pounds, so this bike is easy to handle and toss around when I’m not in the saddle. I reviewed this here because I really couldn’t find any out there for this exact bike. It seemed like exactly what I wanted so I took an informed chance on it, and it’s really so much better than those bike shaped objects that aren’t even (shaped like bikes). Bike industry inside joke, that. Thanks Salsa, thanks for reading and thanks REI.