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Also, linkage on an Orange, say whaaaaaaaaat?? :O
The Industry ™ is heavily trying to get as many ebikes as they can in the market. I still maintain the prices of the bikes we all know and love since always went up to make ebikes more appealing. I mean, if you're a noob, why would you get a bike if 200 bucks more gets you a battery, a motor and less effort? They're also trying to bridge the looks gap, enlarging the downtubes and the BB area. And ultimately, you find pieces like this:
https://www.singletracks.com/mtb-gear/what-should-riders-call-non-elect…
Where the renaming of MTBs gets thrown in the arena.
Ebikes might have their place, but this push by The Industry ™ is really sickening.
[tinfoil hat off]
I will happily stereotype the average emtb guy as an old out of shape white guy who neuters trails with sloppy trailwork when armed with a shovel and has little to no etiquette towards community or government when on a bike. But those guys sucked when they were on pedal bikes too.
Might this be somewhat related to the relaxing of road bike frame design by the UCI? There used to be more limits on how deep, thin, and curved certain frame sections could be but that has opened up significantly now. While we have not had this limitation in MTB, maybe the engineering time/budget/direction/knowledge of big brands with significant road bike volume were optimized around these more limited geometries. The new rules dropped a couple of years ago but the specifications were announced before then, which sort of lines up with this timeline. E Bikes really exploded around the same time too though.
Anyways, what's wrong with a big downtube? Having one deeper doesn't limit frame geometry or get in the way of riding. It could be an engineering bonus to make these tubes bigger for stiffness and weight, until (at least for carbon) the wall thickness is too thin for rock strikes. I get it may not be your preference aesthetically, but I'm sure we will all get used to it just like we did with single ring drivetrains with big pie plate cassettes, dropper posts with extra cables, and bigger handlebar diameters.
Regarding CG's tinkering, as far as I'm informed, it's a custom Bafang unit optimised for light weight, which makes the bikes sleeker through a smaller battery and through a less powerful motor the middrive unit can be a bit smaller too, if there were any changes done it ot of course.
As for the same frame (design) used for both types of bikes, I'd say that's a no. No way in hell are you going to compromise a bike with an open downtube unless strictly necessary (for battery mounting), removing the motor to remove the battery is very cumbersome (though Specialized does this...), the mounting geometry for the motor requires different requirements to pedal bikes, the suspension geometries can be optimised differently (different levels of antisquat and possibly leverage characteristics), etc.
Threshold, LSC, HSC and hydraulic bottom out?
The interesting bit on it that I see here is the hex nut closing off the damper body as opposed to the pin-hole nut on the current designs - the end of a special tool to compress the countermeasure and assemble the shock? The end of countermeasure? A different bleeding procedure compared to the current shock?
Regarding WTB; their 'light' casing is still pretty burly. I think most put it between EXO+ and DD. I would say that's a fair assessment.
It doesn't look too different from the stock one but there has to be a reason. New Scott proto or just testing custom geo?