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Righto, I'm mainly riding non-assisted bikes again but I still love using my Orbea Rise for those rides in awful weather, when energy is low or when I simply want to do a longer Zone 2 ride in the hills.
I fancy a change from the Orbea. I'd like lightish weight and suspension in the 120-150mm range. I want to get a bike with the TQ motor (quite a few manufacturers using it now) but I'd like the battery to be easily removeable. My reason is that I'd occasionally want to do very long rides, or back-to-back rides, and I'd rather take a spare battery than a range extender (didn't like the extender on the Rise... poor value too).
For reference, my rise is the basic H30 model with 540Wh battery. Last ride was 58km with 1100M+ of ascent and I returned with 20% battery remaining. I generally use the minimal assistance possible, although it's fun to spaff a full battery in Boost mode occasionally 🙂 My thoughts are that I could have a smaller battery for less weight, and a second battery for longer stuff.
I know the Trek Exe battery can be removed, but it doesn't look like it really should be done whilst the bike is wet and covered in filthy mud.
Ideas?
Check out the emtb forum, quite a few of the bods on there prefer a full size spare battery to the range extender and seem to have no issues swapping over mid ride.
I know the Trek Exe battery can be removed, but it doesn’t look like it really should be done whilst the bike is wet and covered in filthy mud.
Ive had an exe for a year and a half now, its fine to remove the main battery when the bike is filthy etc, mid ride, it takes 5 minutes.
The TQ system does have the option of a range extender battery that goes in the bottle cage, its 160wh capacity, so a bit less than half the size of the main battery.
I've got 2 main batteries and one range extender. I primarily bought the second main battery because the range extender battery was taking an age to be available to buy, now I have the range extender, the second main battery hasnt been used much.
Another advantage is that the bike can be run off just the range extender battery with the main battery removed, for an even lighter bike (or with all batteries removed for a nearly normal bike ride) , or if you're going abroad on a plane, the range extender battery is small enough to be taken on the plane unlike the main battery.
Thanks, interesting.
Any other thoughts in general on the Exe?
Thinking I might buy the very basic, carbon, model and upgrade almost everything bar the frame, shock, battery and motor? The higher end models don't appear to be great value?
Some good deals on 2023 models right now.
thinking I might buy the very basic, carbon, model and upgrade almost everything bar the frame, shock, battery and motor? The higher end models don’t appear to be great value?
Thats exactly what I did, everything on the base 9.5 model is junk except for the seatpost,saddle,cranks,shock,stem,motor & battery
Its been a great bike, however for full disclosure The first frame did crack on me after about 3 months and was replaced under warranty by trek, and the first motor failed at almost exactly the same time , and was also replaced by trek.
It was one of the very early fuel exes though, so I'm putting it down to manufacturing errors rather than an inherent defect in either the frame or motor. The replacements have been absolutely fine for over 1000 miles now.
The cube bikes can take different size batteries. Mine will take a 750 but you can fit a smaller one with a dummy block to fill the rest of the space
thats exactly what I did, everything on the base 9.5 model is junk except for the seatpost,saddle,cranks,shock,stem,motor & battery
actually the derailluer & shifter were decent too.