2026 MTB Tech Rumors and Innovation - Longer and Slacker

A rich man’s city bike.

I'm personally not a fan of electronic shifting, but it seems like electronic release of damping during a down-shift would be doable when you already have a battery and some processing power onboard. Doesn't solve the effect on suspension, but perhaps it could relieve the pedal effort to climb into the bigger gears. I'm kind of surprised we haven't seen a patent for such a thing. It would increase the size and cost of DRs, but the latest gen are already so massive, perhaps the additional weight would be lost in the noise.

I believe that thing is for rich Germans... what they call an "SUV" ebike.

100%, a high margin inventory mover. Fine for me, will get them to the levo 5 more quickly.

Mom, can we get this SUV ebike?

No, we have one of those at home. 

The one at home:

These originally retailed for 7500. Full XT, and it is full suspension. 

Now you can find them for 1500. It is a weird big old Caddy feeling of a bike, but with a Bosch Performance motor and is class 3. 

Spends 18,500 on a bike

Oh, you want to come and collect it? That'll be another 90 please.

hey Blake. stay tuned on this, hopefully later this year. I'll try to make announcements. if you follow my youtube/instagram you'll know I've been trying to shut up bikes for 10 years LOL

final stages of design making my way to first prototypes this month 😀

I’ve been contemplating making something similar to this, but not actually for a geared bike but for a full suspension single speed.  I’m thinking of making a prototype with my 3d printer but I’ll need to learn CAD first lol 

Why on earth would that specialized levo monstrosity only come in an sworks model... or even an sworks model at all?  Why would the prospective buyer for this bike ever want factory level suspension, maven ultimate, XX transmission, with carbon wheels, bars etc?  I envision the buyer for this being a commuter with too much money, a dentist that also does trail work or anyone with more ego/narcissism then common sense.  Either way, none of the buyers I can project would want to shave 2-3lbs off of this bike and pay 4k more for it.  

The previous bike that was targeting this segment from specialized, the tero, actually made sense for the very niche buyer that would be looking for such a thing... This thing is real life AI slop.  Who knows, maybe this is the way to grab outside of the mtb niche market into a different niche where the big S has zero marketshare.  It just doesn't seem like a 12k entry point is the way to go about that.  

As a some sort of specialized fanboy, it's really a shame watching what that company has turned in to but still kind of curious how many more models they can put out of that same frame.

They are just trying to charge whatever so they can recoup some of the demo development costs lol

It doesn't seem real.  Does this appeal to anyone?

Maybe they'll sell them all in Dubai to guys driving jacked-up, six-wheeled G-Wagons or something.

I can share an example of flip chips for wheel size done poorly because I owned a 2024 trek session for a year. 

Based on the geo numbers, the bike was clearly designed around a 29" rear wheel, but Trek marketing decided that sure, you can throw a 27.5 rear wheel on it as long as you put it in the high flip chip position. 

What results is a largely rear biased bike. The bike rides so much better with a 29" rear wheel I went back to that, despite persistent butt buzzing because I'm a normal height dude. 

Would be sweet on those 5 days every spring I’m out doing trail side chainsaw work. 

Is there a new POC Coron on the go?

Specialized single handedly making this sport look pretentious as hell. I dont care who you are or how “cooool” it is, if youre buying that bike, Im going to laugh at you. Tahoe about to be filled with this shit. 

Well..my first reaction was the same. 

On a second thought, disregarding the ridiculous price...I'd be more keen to have this than most e-bikes that came out recently. 

I generally don't enjoy riding e-bikes, so if I do, it's for trail building. I'd actually take this thing for carrying tools etc. Maybe I'm just low key trying to repeat my "ebike isn't a mtb" thing, as in my view an emtb fits somewhere between a shovel and a VW Jetta, but for such purpose it actually makes some sense.

But then again you look at the price and I'm back to "I'd rather walk than ebike"

You know what?  That's actually quite fair.  While the bike obviously looks silly at first glance, a few of them would probably be a decent purchase for a well-funded trail association for trail maintenance purposes.  

luckily you can just buy the cheaper alloy levo 4 and then add the racks, saving you 7k each. 

I highly doubt trail associations need an Sworks bike that costs 3x the price of a good enough alternative.

We considered them for our trail crew but people were hesitant since they didn’t actually see the rack in person. They also debated whether there were many days that you’d actually bike in with lots of tools for one day of work. Vesus walking in with tools, stashing them, and biking in the subsequent days. I thought the bike and rack was a good idea. 

 It sure what those guys are thinking. But whatever it is it’s goofy as heck

It absolutely seems like a “hey ChatGPT can you analyze the bike and outdoor industries and come up with 5 ideas/opportunities that would generate profit for our international bicycle company? Preferably with some buzzwords attached thank you!”

This is grotesque. But I wonder what kind of range you could get out of it if you were to really stretch out the motor and match a traditional bike packing effort

That Levo X is weird with that parts kit but put Deore level stuff on it and paint it camo and they'll sell an absolute shit ton of them.

It’s the combo of paint and build kit that boggles my mind. You’re right, there is a market for this kind of bike but this particular build is bizarro

(Cross-post from the Bike Economics thread; if people don't think it's relevant to this thread, I'll delete it)

My friend (- owner of a small chain of bike shops) just told me that, a couple of days ago, Trek informed their dealerships that there's going to be a lot of change in their product line-up in the near future. 

Apparenly Trek is discontinuing a bunch of models, including the Session, Slash, Remedy and Top Fuel. The way the announcement was worded makes it seem like there's no direct plans for updates or replacement models for any of them, they'll simply be discontinued. For Trek's mtb line-up, this would only leave the Supercaliber and the Fuel (EX, MX, LX).

This (- and Specialized axing the Enduro and condensing the various Stumjumper models into one) could be the first signs of an industry-wide trend. Regular, leg-powered mountainbikes are generally a dying breed - my friend tells me that of all the mountainbikes sold at his chain of bike shops in 2025, over 80% were e-mtbs. A quick google search seems to confirm this trend. 

This leads me to believe that we'll see a lot of manufacturers consolidating their mountain bike line-ups in the near future.

Most brands will probably continue to offer some variation of a 100-120 mm XC bike for racing and one genenral-purpose trail bike in the 140-150mm range - and some gravity-focused brands might still offer some sort of freeride- or dh-bike. But most other models are probably going to get cut in favour of more trendy stuff, like gravel- and e-bikes.

What do you guys think? Could this be a sign of financial trouble at Trek? Maybe something to do with the US CBP Withhold Release Order on any goods manufactured by Giant (- which is one of Trek's OEMs). Or is it simply a sign of the times? Could it be that offering regular mountainbikes simply isn't profitable enough anymore for a lack of demand?

Well, this is correct but this is also (as we say in germany) "old coffee".

This route was apparent since at least 2 years. It just takes time to really show itself with the actual multipurpose models and the "killing" of most of the rest.

In germany its about 2-3% of all bikesales that are non-e-MTB. You don't have to be a genius to see that the former amount of diversity in models (and sizes) will not continue like it once was.

you guys are just shocked at these racks! Am I missing something? It’s just a rack set for their existing bike? Great!l, fine! You fragile fundamentalists…

They look like sick racks. Dudes in the ad roasted up to a hut, removed the racks, ripped some trails, drank some beers, slept and ripped home the next day? I’m cool with it, that’s exactly what I like to do! E-bikes are beyond perfect for that mission. The worst ebike is miles better than the best pedal bike. Figuring out how to get laps on laps on laps of my favorite trails was the first thing I did with my first capable eMTB. Got a case of beer and a little generator, see you in three days!