Following on the heels of last month’s major leak of the design of Rivian’s secretive ALSO e-bike, now we’ve just gotten a much better look at the upcoming entry to the US micromobility market. And it’s a doozie.
Our previously best look came in the form of blurrier images that were mistakenly left in a marketing video prepared by the company’s social media team.
But thanks to an eagle-eyed reader who spotted the yet-to-be-released e-bike on the Caltrain yesterday morning (hat tip to Adem Rudin), now we’ve got a great view from the expensive seats, barely two days ahead of the anticipated official reveal.
The bike looks to be a test mule based on the extra engineering hardware and the missing shroud covering the wiring run on the front of the battery case. There appear to be several sensors mounted to the bike, including an expensive triaxial accelerometer on the side of the battery and some piece of diagnostic hardware strapped to the downtube.
But otherwise, it looks like the real deal and matches the several different angles we saw in blurrier form in my previous leak.
Now we have a great view of the front fork, which is confirmed to be an inverted fork. Fascinatingly, it has structural bosses for mounting a front rack, and we can see the orange cargo box employed for gear hauling duty. That’s likely a custom-designed part, as I’m not aware of any other cargo forks of this style currently on the market. It’s also a bit of a strange choice. It certainly adds to the utility of the bike, but most e-bike manufacturers have moved to headtube-mounted racks for better stability. A fork-mounted rack swings with the handlebars, meaning heavier loads will change the dynamics of the ride, reduce the front-end handling, and can even lead to dangerous oscillations under the right (or wrong) conditions.
Moving further down, we can clearly see a tone ring built into the front disc brake rotor, which is a giveaway that the bike will feature anti-lock braking (ABS), or at least front wheel ABS. Front-wheel ABS would be a major safety upgrade and is rarely found on bicycles. Between the inverted front fork and the ABS tone ring, the front end of the bike looks more like light motorcycle gear.
The front and rear racks point towards fairly obvious utility intentions for the bike, though the full-suspension and Kenda El Capo tires seem like they belong more on the dirt trails than the bike lanes. It’s a strange mix, but perhaps the tires were just temporary replacements on the test mule. Full-suspension, while more common on off-road bikes, can still be a major upgrade for an urban commuter. We’ve seen it on premium models from companies like Riese & Müller, though also with incredibly premium price tags.
We’re also getting our best look yet at the battery, which seems to be a removable unit that slides in from the side of the bike. It takes up a big portion of the central frame area, whose panels also likely cover a mid-drive motor and the bike’s speed controller, among other critical electronics. We can also see now that the belt drive is a Gates center-drive system, one of the most premium belt drives out there for bicycles (not to mention that Gates is the belt drive maker of choice for high power electric motorcycles like those from LiveWire and Zero).
The rear suspension is still shrouded and we don’t get a great look at it, but we can see some linkage and it may be a four-bar setup – again pointing to the sophisticated engineering that went into designing this frame.
The handlebars appear to support button clusters on each side, though we can’t see what functions they might offer. It’s not clear if there are any shifters or if the bike is a single-speed, and we also don’t see a throttle, though it could be a thumb throttle that is obscured from view. The grips appear to be single lock-ons, so I don’t think we’re looking at a full-width twist throttle like you’d find on a motorcycle.
The mirror and the sumo wrestler bike horn are presumably the test engineer’s add-ons, though we can’t rule out for certain that ALSO riders will get their own mostly naked audio warning device.
What else can you see on the bike that I missed? Let me know in the comments below!
Author: Micah Toll
Source: Electrek
Reviewed By: Editorial Team
