When I first hefted an ebike into the air and was stunned by the weight, my question was, “how do you haul one of these to the trail?” While some bike shop employees assured me that you could haul an ebike with a standard tray-style hitch rack (and I did haul one on my Kuat NV 2.0), many racks list a bike weight limit of around 35-40lbs. With most ebikes tipping the scales around 40-50lbs, technically you’re over the limit of most racks. And two ebikes? Forget about it.
While I’m all for bending the rules a bit, loading a $5,000+ ebike onto a rack that’s not designed to carry it seems like a bad idea. You could argue that riding an ebike is a bad idea to begin with, but that’s neither here nor there. If you do decide to ride one of these behemoths on a moto-legal trail, Thule has introduced a rack designed to safely carry your speed machine to and from the trailhead: the new EasyFold XT transport rack.
While Thule notes that the EasyFold is compatible with all types of bikes (including road, mountain, and fat), with a 66-pound weight limit per bike, and with an ebike mounted on the rack at Thule’s Interbike booth, the EasyFold is truly designed for heavyweight motorized bicycles.
The EasyFold name comes from the design, which allows the owner to fold the rack in half and quickly remove it from the car, reducing its size to “no bigger than a normal suitcase,” according to Thule.
But how do you go about loading a 50-pound ebike onto an elevated tray rack, especially if you have a physical limitation that predisposes you to using an ebike in the first place? Here, Thule took cues from motorcycle hitch racks, by including a ramp to roll the ebike up so that it does not need to be lifted. The ramp then collapses down and is stored beneath the rack when not in use.
Like ebikes, the EasyFold XT does not come cheap: MSRP is listed at $749.95.
