Hello Vital MTB Visitor,
We’re conducting a survey and would appreciate your input. Your answers will help Vital and the MTB industry better understand what riders like you want. Survey results will be used to recognize top brands. Make your voice heard!
Five lucky people will be selected at random to win a Vital MTB t-shirt.
Thanks in advance,
The Vital MTB Crew
I’m actually pretty pumped on a short travel bike that’s NOT flex stay.
Add that the reach is over 510 (finally!)
And it’s CBF? And carbon and red?
Damn that’s a nice bike
I had a pipe dream that Revel was making an ebike named the RE.
I can't tell, is the solar charging intended to be through cells covering the wheel disks? If so, I'm curious how that's going to work out. The collection area (ignoring parts of the bike that shadow a portion of the arrays) is not large, roughly 0.5m^2 for the pair of wheels, minus some coverage losses since square cells fit into an annulus can't give 100% coverage. I'm not sure what cell technology they are using, but assuming something like 20% efficiency, in perfect conditions, mid-day in the long part of the year, with the axles pointed at the sun, you could get something like 90 W. If the bike was propped up on the kickstand, then it would be less than ideal mid-day, so maybe 50 or 60W. So for an 800 Wh battery, you could get maybe 40 to 50% charge in a full day, dusk to dawn. If the cells on each wheel are wired in series as a single array to an MPPT, any shadowing of one cell affects the power output of all cells, so chainstays, seat-stays, fork, kickstand, rotors all detract from charge performance. Seems like it might be useful to charge your phone, but if you're counting on it to get you home after a long ride, good luck.
The website claims 50 miles of base range with 17 miles per day of solar, so that’s a 34% charge. For the 360Wh battery, 34% is 122Wh. Over the course of an 8 hour day that’s only ~15W of solar. With modern solar tech that honestly sounds conservative to me, as disgusting as this whole webpage is
I didn't see the Wh capacity of the battery - that's pretty small. Honestly, with the bike sitting upright, probably not aimed toward the sun well, and with partial cell-shadowing, 15W might be about right. Seems about like covering the roof of your EV in the hopes of extending range. Kind of a drop in the bucket. Cell survival on the wheels probably isn't great either. Seems like a wacky idea, but I'm sure plenty of folks will part with their money for it.
Man… this forum is screwed. Everything is turning crab, each new product launch is 1.25% better than the shitty unusable last generation, and now we are discussing solar capabilities on an ai bike that will more than likely be a kickstarter scam. The future looks great! 😃
"each new product launch is 1.25% better than the last generation that was also pretty damn good"
FTFY. Sucks, but most stuff is good now, so we get small revisions.
I know I was being sarcastic dick about the industry. 🥴
Sometimes it is hard to tell given a few takes on here.
Post a reply to: 2026 MTB Tech Rumors and Innovation - Longer and Slacker