A STRIPPED down electric mountain bike? YES!

[@richardl1054]

Thank you for this lovely Malvern Hills video and your other interesting rides with Riese & Muller eBikes, particularly your Snowdon trip. I am an older rider who rides about 85% off-road and have owned a Delite Mountain with a SRAM AXS12 speed cassette and electronic derailleur for 5 months. I have the Delite GT rear carrier and Mudhugger front and rear mudguards, which do protect me from the mud and muck. I also have Tannus Liner inserts in both wheels to protect the inner tubes. In 5 years of riding eBikes, I have not yet had a puncture when using these. I suggest that the narrower Jonny Watts tyres, the ‘basic’ Suntour suspension, higher handlebars, heavier Rohloff rear hub and what appear to be fully laden rear panniers on Rufus’ Delite GT wouldn’t help him keep his front wheel on the ground on steeply inclined hills. I tested a Delite Mountain with a Rohloff hub and found gears 1-7 to be much more noisy, noticeably heavier, with some ‘drag’ vibration from the belt system. Negotiating 5 bar gates and steep styles was more challenging - hence I chose a single battery Delite touring version. Recently, I did a 46 mile ride into and around east London, via canal paths and some roads. Increasing the tyre pressures from the mid 20s to 40 PSI improved the rolling efficiency significantly. I agree with most of your comments, except referring to this as a “toy”. It is more than a ‘plaything to provide temporary amusement for a child or adult’. It is a highly engineered, expensive mountain eBike (the only one which R&M make, apart from the SuperDelite Mountain), which does its off-road tasks extremely well, comfortably and safely. The limitations are the rider’s, rather than the eBike.

[@EDEMOElectricBikes]

Hi Richard, brilliant to hear that you are enjoying our videos. Thanks for your suggestions too. You're right, Rufus does have a lot of heavy filming gear in those panniers that no doubt contributed to the wheel lifting along with the some other factors of his spec. Point taken on the "toy". We really wanted to get across just how fun the Delite Mountain is, but for sure it's a hugely capable mountain ebike, we were struck by how the bike is such a playful ride.

[@PoshByDefault]

What about putting slicks on this for the roads? City biking

[@PetrolheadTours]

Just missing the Rohloff 😁😁

[@commuterbranchline8132]

Does the motor provide regenerative braking when descending hills?

[@hr8479]

You talk about the weight difference between Delite and Superdelite and opting for the Delite and carrying a spare battery if you want to go further. If you were to choose a Superdelite, is there anything to stop you only putting one of the batteries in? I should imagine it's the actual batteries themselves that account for most of the weight difference, though it would be interesting to know the weight of a Delite against a Superdelite with only one battery inside, in a like for like comparison. I wonder too, if an empty top battery compartment on a Superdelite could be used as a sort of glovebox, so to speak - and keep keys/tools/phone/wallet in, for instance? Make it the Honda Goldwing of electric bicycles! Nice video, nice countryside, nice bikes. Looks like someone had some cleaning to do at the end of the ride though!

[@EDEMOElectricBikes]

Hi, thanks, we had a lot of fun making the video! The Superdelite will work fine with only one battery in it. You'd want to remove the top battery in order to keep the weight in the lower part of the frame. The 500Wh battery in the top is just shy of 3kg so it's a decent weight saving. You'd need a transport cover from Riese and Muller for the empty compartment and they coming in around £45, we can source these. The space in the compartment is a tempting storage place although you'd need to be very careful as loose small items could drop into the frame which would be very hard to retrieve and you wouldn't want to damage the termination ends. Not really recommended but love the Honda Goldwing comparison!

[@hr8479]

@@EDEMOElectricBikes Thanks very much for confirming that the bike will work just fine with a missing battery. I couldn't find that information anywhere, though I did manage to find the weights for both bikes and the batteries and figured it would be close. R&M quote the Superdelite Mountain Rohloff at 28.4kg and the Delite Mountain Rohloff at 25.8kg. Bosch quotes the battery weights at 2.8kg for the 500Wh and 3.5kg for the 625Wh, so there really wouldn't be much in it between the two models if only one battery is installed. That makes the super versions more versatile, marginally lighter (ironically) and arguably better looking in a rugged sort of way, albeit more expensive! I did find the transport covers last week - a New Zealand firm has a video about them. Much as I'd like to pull the trigger on one, I can't seem to reconcile the fact that a brand new Triumph Scrambler motorcycle, ridden out of the showroom, actually costs less!!! I realise that the R&M is loaded with high end components, that you don't see come together in one place on a bicycle very often, if at all, but for the moment, it's still a bit of a niche product and economies of scale are going to count against it. I've had my eye on them for 2 years now, ever since I saw a local builder using one of the front loading cargo bikes during lockdown. It has given birth to an itch that I know one day, I'll just have to scratch!