DJI's E-MTB Play: Avinox, Amflow and the Future Business of eebs

If Avinox were just delivering on power it would be much easier to snub, but their approach to integration and customization is seamless and their motor outright outperforms everything else. The new Kona with the Bosch CX is really close in weight to the 600Wh Avinox bikes so despite not pursuing a lightweight system they’re not meaningfully behind either. 

First generation Avinox bikes were already a foot-throttle compared to everything else on the market. 1000w+ of output with less than 150w of input is no longer a mountain bike in any meaningful way. Doing a sustained 32km/hr up the Blackcomb access road shouldn't be possible without pro-Tour legs and lungs on you. These bikes are going to be an absolute menace on shared climb trails.

I think DJI is going to be really hard to beat long term.  They have such an advantage on application and user interface development that their product is going to seem more refined.  Beyond that, the access they have to cutting edge, and less regulated battery production and technology is going to make it much easier for them to push that envelope and create custom cells and bespoke battery solutions.  The advantage they have with 3 phase motor design, efficiency and development goes without saying... and that is a huge advantage in this space.  

I also think you're bang on about the opportunity to integrate vertically and they also have no loyalty that they need to maintain.  For example, most manufacturers are going either shimano or sram on the electronic drivetrain... where as avinox is supporting both.  The fact that Bosch has stayed strong to their "eshift" standard and not reached across the isle to play nice with Sram or shimano, is telling.   

One thing I do find interesting is that virtually none of them are working to play nice with Garmin integration (shimano, bosch, avinox) and sending data to garmin.  Avinox is doing slightly more then bosch has been with ant+ and receiving a heart rate monitor... but now bosch is doing that with the kiox system as well.  It just seems interesting that this is the place where the mfgs are drawing the line, it seems telling that they are perceiving the garmin eco system as a competitor or at least an ecosystem that potentially conflicts with their own control/vision of the customer.  I can definitely see a world where DJI would potentially want to compete directly with garmin in the future... they seem to most of the tech on hand to create a garmin competitor device.  

It feels like this is the start of vertical integration for avinox and I feel like that's where they are really going to start throwing their weight around.  It feels like MGUs or their own electronic drivetrain, electronic suspension, dropper posts etc, are going to be ripe for the picking for them.  

For me, it's not so much the power, but the packaging. I was not using ALL of my Bosch power or even my EP8 juice when I had them. However, given that the newer Avinox bikes are providing full power in a size/weight configuration getting closer to a DH/enduro bike... Why not?

To me, the Ebike is more of a commodity than a Trail/Enduro/DH. Kinda sad but true. The other issue is service and resale. Due to the fact that this market is commoditized, at least in my head, I want to future-proof as best as possible. As long as the Geo is in the right place, I am good. I mean, it DOES have a motor! Sure, the Bosch bikes are PERFECTLY sufficient, along with Spesh, Aventon, Giant, etc. However, the perspective is that they are yesterday's news. So if and when I sell whatever Avinox bike I have, it will be that much further ahead than the other stuff on the resale market. 

I'm really, really concerned about the level of power and assist and what it's ultimately going to mean for the trail system I founded (and still chair) specifically and trail access in general.  I think the TQ50 is where ebikes should have started and stopped, but what Avinox is putting out is far beyond anything and totally irresponsible and unprincipled. F*ck them.  

I know some bike manufacturers may feel like they have to adopt Avinox or go out of business.  That's a tough decision, but if you decide Avinox, then please please us any further pandering of any rider-owned, we-care-about-the-sport bullshit.  When the chips are down, you're no different than Amazon or any other similar company that makes soulless decisions based on money and spreadsheets.

We need to brand these things quickly and dramatically.  We have to crystalize in the public consciousness that they are not "e-bikes."  I say we call anything with an Avinox motor a "communist bike."   I live in the United States and have watched our political disaster play out.  Apparently these sorts of antics make a difference.

I'm staring down 50.  My TQ ebike feels pretty damn bike-like, at least compared to my Madonna.  I just want to spend as much time as possible maneuvering a bike down fun trails, and the TQ motor let's me do a lot more that and I am so grateful to have it.  But I think motorized bicycles are very likely to take us to a very bad place.  I think a lot about whether, if I could snap my fingers and make ebikes go away forever, I'd be unselfish enough to do it.  I hope I would.

I want more of a mtb feel. Not interested in pedal throttle. At all. Did that last week in SantaCruz and felt like a douche (not that DJI people are, just how I felt)on a bike I was trying. 

 I was going to buy a new Crestline but decided no, rather ride my Relay as long as it is working! Or until some real mtb company builds something similar but better. 

Just purchased my first e-bike after all my ridding buddies made the switch to eebs over the past 2 years. By being the last holdout, I was able to ride the gamut of motor options (Shimano, Bosch, TQ) and I settled on a TQ bike (Yeti MTE). For me, full fat eebs felt awkward, clumsy and over powered on our tight singletrack. In the right situations, the power was addicting (fire road climbs) but for 90% of our rides it was total overkill. For me, the choice was easy once I realized that I preferred more of an “assisted” ride experience. 

Having a 1,000 HP car can be a lot of fun to own and drive from time to time, but it wouldn’t be my first choice as a daily driver.  Having a 450 HP car is still a ton of fun AND I can grab my groceries and take my kids to school every day.

Cheers for making this thread. I think it’s going to get quite old man shouts at clouds, but there we go. 

I come at this from a slightly different angle, I’m an elected local councillor. As a result I’ve managed to have meetings with a few of the land owners and managers at my local. It’s a complicated picture, 3 public owners, a few private and 2 main land managers who have different goals and incentives. It’s an intensively used bit of land, 2 million people live within 30km of it in a very nature deprived part of a very nature deprived country. We get away with a lot there, they rarely close trail unless it’s egregiously placed like dropping into a major fire road at speed or built in ecologically sensitive area. 

They think about mountain biking a lot. For forestry, it’s a source of revenue through car parking and therefore they do kind of like it and want more of it, but it’s also a source of a load of their work. They get sued when dad three kids wrecks himself on a clearly marked black addit on the red XC loop, people moan at them that the official stuff is blown out and then moan that the resurfacing is sanitising it, they have to help extract people who wreck in bad spots- you get the picture. They also have to justify their practice of pretty much not touching the off piste to the other land owners, some of whom are actively hostile to MTB. Versus the revenue that they derive from it, they view MTB as a disproportionate drain on their resources. 

I mention all this to highlight that so far, I wouldn’t say that e-bikes rank highly in their list of concerns. Surrons do though (the police have a dirt bike to chase them, that’s got to be the best job in the station surely). When they do talk about e-bikes it’s in reference to how it’s harder to keep the official loops in good shape than it used to be and to justify some of the more controversial armouring.

So what am I trying to say? The trail access anxiety with e-bikes, which I have, is so far theoretical. Because e-mtbs look like bikes to the uninitiated, I expect lay people’s irritation of them riding fire roads at higher speeds will get directed at mtb in general. For that reason we’ll probably not see an anti e-bike backlash, more a slow scaling up of already existing anti MTB feeling. Whether this will rise to the level of causing land access issues I don’t know.

Solution wise, id like to see two things that definately won’t happen. Namely, sensible speed and power restrictions from industry consensus. Just yesterday I overheard two Avinox owners discussing how easy it was to remove speed limitations on their bikes with a VPN- they need to make that shit harder. The other thing that would help would be people just being more polite to other users of the site.

 

I don't loath Avinox but I also wouldn't pay my own money for one of their bikes - This is my tinfoil-hat brain thinking but I'm wary of any brand that is potentially monopolising a section of the market. I also don't know what brand I would happily pay for at the moment (maybe pinion?) because Bosch isn't exactly a leader in doing right by the consumer either

Vertical integration is something I wouldn't be surprised to see even more of - I've been a fan of the idea of electronic suspension and IMO a lot of the typical e-bike buyers would be all over it, yet Rockshox and Fox have fumbled the concept for over a decade! It would be easy for someone like Avinox or Bosch to make a killer system that eats in to another segment of the industry 

I made my last post when I was generally frustrated with life. Sorry about that.  Most of you are probably still not going to agree with me, but I'll try again and then shut up.  I think it's really, really important our community talks about whatever these two-wheeled machines with 800% assist and enormous torque/power actually are, and I don't want to stifle that occurring in this thread.  I hope this thread gets a lot of traction and I learn something about why others feel so differently than me. Finally, apologies for waxing a bit philosophical.

Honor, or whatever you want to call it,  doesn't really exist outside of community. "Honor" means two things: you do the right thing yourself and you hold others accountable when they don't do the right thing.  A lot of people do the former; far fewer do the latter.  But a community is defined, in large part, by its shared values, and those value are propagated by the members of the community holding each other accountable to them.

Mountain biking has been a lifestyle for me and provided me with community.  I thought I knew what that community stood for - what it's value were.  But I've watched an outside corporation, focused only on profit, began the process of fundamentally changing the nature of the activity we all love so much while almost all of the prominent voices in our community have remained silent (props to Hans Rey) and numerous bike companies have adopted the motor.  I find that silence and adoption very, very disquieting. 

When we struggle with workday attendance and general coordination at my local trail system, I remind other leaders that the people who are highly amendable to that sort of thing are at the tennis courts and golf courses.  We attract independent misfits who don't much care for authority and are happy to tell said authority to go f*ck themselves.  I like it that way.

But I'm becoming less and less confident that's the true nature of our community.  I'm feeling more and more like I no longer understand our community's values or the people that constitute it.  How have we turned into such a bunch of passive, shrug-our-shoulders, aw-shucks-it's-going-happen-anyway sheep?  The mountain bike "press," prominent riders, and other voices remind me more and more of corporate middle management, which is about the ugliest thing I can say about another human being.

I firmly believe this is an existential moment for mountain biking.  Ebikes made that moment inevitable.  DJI/Avinox has made it now.  I fear we are failing to rise to that moment, and instead choosing passivity, silence, and - worst of all - cowardice.  Perhaps I'm simply getting old and am only resisting the natural and inevitable change in the values and composition of a community over time.  Still, I'm increasingly asking myself whether this new community is one about which I still care deeply and want to make a central part of my life.

I suppose I should think about whether to just call it and buy one of those newfangled, carbon-fiber pickle board paddles.  Maybe I should, but I'd encourage all of you to think about whether you really want to sit passively and silently by while our sport and community is reshaped and redefined by a foreign corporation that doesn’t give a shit about either, much less general norms of corporate ethics.

I wish MTB media would refuse to review any non-Class 1 e-bike. That would rule out the current Levo and anything with an Avinox. Of course, the Utube Bros would then get all of the clicks as they would review all day in exchange for free use of Class 3 bikes.

Avinox offers a UCC compliant motor now, and it's labeled and locked down. That should be the only DJI motor installed in an e-bike, imo.

I ride an ebike from 2018 with a 500wh battery. Still goes like the day I got it new. I’m glad I don’t have to make a decision on a new bike and test ride new ones.