Protractor: Multiple browser instance tests fail where Single Instance tests pass - angularjs

Question

I'm testing an Ionic application. When the app is run in the browser, the console does show that cordova.js is missing - which is right, but it doesn't break the application.
As long as I run my tests with a single browser instance, the missing files does not cause my tests to fail. Here is my configuration and spec files:
exports.config = {
seleniumAddress: 'http://localhost:4444/wd/hub',
framework: 'jasmine2',
suites: {
test: 'e2e/test.spec.js'
},
allScriptsTimeout: 60000,
capabilities: {
'browserName': 'chrome',
'chromeOptions': {
binary: '/Applications/Google\ Chrome\ Stable.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome',
args: [],
extensions: [],
}
},
onPrepare: function() {
browser.driver.get('http://localhost:8100');
}
};
Here is the test file:
describe('First test', function(){
it('just verifies that everything loads correctly', function() {
expect(1).toEqual(1);
});
});
The above works without errors. But opening a second browser instance causes a fail:
describe('First test', function(){
var browser2 = browser.forkNewDriverInstance();
browser2.get('http://localhost:8100');
var element2 = browser2.element;
it('just verifies that everything loads correctly', function() {
expect(1).toEqual(1);
});
});
With the error message:
/usr/local/lib/node_modules/protractor/node_modules/selenium-webdriver/lib/atoms/error.js:113
var template = new Error(this.message);
^
UnknownError: unknown error: cordova is not defined