Charging The Trails: Whyte Trail eMTBs
Charging The Trails: Whyte Trail eMTBs
Motors on mountain bikes? What's that all about?
e-MTBers are a growing force amongst the mountain biking community and with so much investment and development into the sector over the last 5 years, it certainly won’t be slowing down. Electric mountain bikes sometimes get a hard time, dismissed by purists as a lazy option or a free ride, but the tides are turning and the benefits can’t be denied – a quick scan of social media will quickly show you just what can be achieved with these adventure machines. Capable of taking you to places that were previously untouchable, or simply spending longer days at the trail centre, the dawn of the electric mountain trail bike is upon us – and we’re not complaining!
Where does Whyte come in?
Whyte is at the forefront of eMTB development, utilising decades of industry knowledge and R&D to drive it in the right direction and beyond. Recent developments in the geometry of their latest high-end trail bikes have been ported straight over to their eMTB trail range, providing all of the same perks. Trail offset is largely overlooked in the buying process, lost in geometry charts and glossed over by manufacturers – however, small tweaks can have a big impact on the ride quality of your bike. Without overcomplicating it, the trail offset is simply the distance between the steering axis and the point at which the tyre contacts the ground: more trail results in slower steering, reduced trail results in snappier steering.
Whyte has spent plenty of time and money looking into the benefits and drawbacks of optimising the trail and how to best utilise it in the overall geometry characteristics, which is culminated in their Optimised Trail Offset (OTO). By pulling the front wheel closer to the rider, Whyte found that the handling was far more stable on descents. However, to balance out this change in trail the top tube has increased in length to maintain the right fit, retaining Whyte’s tried and tested geometry characteristics with all of the benefits of a reduced trail.
What is Whyte’s e-bike offering?
Whyte E-150
Running 150mm of travel and 29er wheels, the Whyte E-150 will happily scroll through the countryside for miles and then tear down technical descents the next day. Powered by the Bosch Performance Line motor: the Whyte E-150 electric full-suspension MTB will quite literally take you further.
Hidden away in the downtube is a 625Wh battery, offering a larger capacity than most of the competition so that lung-busting inclines or big days out are no longer a concern. Serious shredding requires serious power – the Bosch Performance Line motor pumps out 85Nm of torque to take the sting out of unexpected undulations out on the trails.
Both spec packages (S and RS) use SRAM and Rockshox components throughout, both featuring the Rockshox ZEB and Deluxe fork/rear shock combinations. The top level RS is equipped with X01 Eagle and Code R brakes, along with uprated internals to the shocks, while the more economical S version uses GX Eagle and Guide brakes.
Whyte E-160
Whyte’s E-160 offers a step up in suspension travel and chunkier 27.5" rubber. This is the model to go for if you're all about the technical trail riding. The same motor and battery pack as the E-150 features here too, so you're always packing your own uplift. On this trail-focussed frame, the signature OTO geometry really pays dividends.
The E-160 RS sports a top-tier spec, with a 160mm Fox Float 38 fork and Fox Float Performance rear shock along with SRAM's X01 Eagle drivetrain and Code R brakes. The E-160 S uses longer travel versions of the ZEB and Deluxe shocks found on the E-150 models. Both are wearing wide Maxxis Minion and Assigai tyres.
