Elevate: Bringing eMTB Performance to Any Bike
As electric mountain bikes (eMTBs) become more commonplace, riders have begun to see the negative effects of time and miles on battery life, motor performance, and overall reliability.
Our goal with Elevate has always been to address the downsides of eMTB ownership, including the limited frame options and compromises to serviceability. That’s why this article by Matt Wragg on Pinkbike caught our attention. In addition to the typical issues with high-mileage mountain bikes, the article highlights several pain points of long-term eMTB ownership. Chief among these issues is the lack of user serviceability for many eMTB components like motors and batteries. The YT decoy mentioned in the article is considered a “value” eMTB, but the replacement battery is either $500 or $1000, depending on which size you opt for. The Elevate Minicube Battery is $325, and small enough to carry a spare in a hip pack.
Additionally, the article mentions how difficult it can be to get an eMTB motor serviced, which requires either shipping the bike or taking it to a shop, forcing riders to either take a break from their favorite hobby or pay for overpriced rentals.
Elevate’s quickly removable drive unit enables a seamless service process that hardly differs from regular operation. Not only is it possible to send just the drive unit in for service, the rest of the system is about as easy to install/remove as many other components on a mountain bike. Riders have been working on their own bikes for years, so why should that change with the advent of eMTBs? Many of our design decisions for Elevate were intended to make basic maintenance easy for customers, without having to send out the drive unit or go to a bike shop. And, for repairs that can’t be performed by the average rider, Elevate provides bike shops the potential to provide loaner units to customers while their unit is in the shop. Even if loaner units are not available, customers can easily remove the battery and motor and have a fully functional mountain bike with minimal dead weight.
Another issue with most eMTBs, and the reason why many are unsure about switching, is the limited selection of frame types on the market. The constraints of typical mid-drive eMTBs lead to big, bulky frames and oftentimes require riders to get a style of bike that they aren’t used to. This is why we created Elevate as a non-invasive add on, which allows you to seamlessly bring new life to your bike (or bikes!) that you’ve been riding for years. And, if you decide to get a new bike, you can transfer over your Elevate kit, rather than having to pay for the motor, battery, and electronics that come with a new eMTB.
The Pinkbike article really resonated with the team at Bimotal, as it highlighted just a few of the reasons why we think Elevate is such an important product for the eMTB industry, and micromobility as a whole. We firmly believe that fun drives adoption, which is why we developed Elevate to simply add fun to the riding experience and get more people outside and enjoying their bikes.
Authored by Julian Rubinstein, a returning Bimotal Mechanical Engineering Intern