Retailers in the UK, www.wearea2b.com
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| It goes A2B. That's anti-climb glass atop the wall. |
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| Rear hub motor, 250W |
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| Integrated battery pack has excellent security |
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| London cobbles, rite 'ard |
In one obvious sense, any e-bike (or pedelec, to use the correct term) is a hybrid. It has a motor that works in concert with a pair of human legs, the same way a Toyota Prius mates a motor to a combustion engine. The holy grail of e-bike fanciers is an urban nirvana in which the simple beauty of the bicycle is magnified by an electric motor, making it faster and further but without any of the registration, licence, training and insurance and parking burdens that apply even to the lowliest Vespa.
But the A2B Hybrid 24 is also a hybrid of bicycle and scooter design, and clearly reveals the impact of serious engineers coming at a brief from a non-bicycle trade direction.
The unconventional Y-frame was inherited from Ultra Motor, the UK company that created the Hybrid 24 and was acquired by Hero a year ago. It's quite massive, with substantial internal routing for the cables, and prominent welds that are very neat but still prominent. What do I mean by that? I'm not holding back from using the word ugly. But it's not ugly; it's burly, or some other word.
And that's the point I'm trying to make here. This bike is very lightweight compared to a Vespa, but it's barely comparable to a bicycle, particularly if you're viewing it from Planet Racing Bike. In that sense the Hybrid 24 fills a hitherto non-existent sector. You cannot do it justice by only coming at it with pre-conditions and prejudices.
As I ride it away, I keep the motor shut off and spin a low gear. It knocks along OK, but compared to my normal ride (pictured at the bottom of this post, for context), it's terribly upright, even by Dutch bike standards, and massively wide at the handlebars. It's as if this is aimed at a global citizen for whom a bicycle is unfamiliar, or scary.
Stopping to get the juice on, I'm impressed by the way you just wave a fob across the little digital speedo/battery indicator. It lights up neon blue. And then whoosh, as soon as I push down on the crank, the whole 250W mnotor pours out all its torque and thrusts me forwards. More follows until I hit 16 mph (25KM/h), and when I tackle my nearest hill, it makes mincemeat of it. Later on the same day, I come home via my local cobbles in Murray Mews, a secret testing ground I use for bikes. The A2B is in its element on this bad surface. The big tyres and front suspension just shrug off the cobbles as the rear hub motor powers it forwards.
But it's not all good. I'd deliberately timed my test of the A2B with a week of heavy turbo training at home. There are times when you want the commute to go away. I had fantasised about this bike whispering me along, like a two-wheeled Rolls Royce. But the control system that defines an e-bike is not a power-on-demand (throttle) system like an e-scooter. It's a hybrid. If you don't pedal you don't get assisted. The 35kg weight of the A2B robs the motor of much of its substantial power, and by the time I reached work I had a soaking wet back, exacerbated by the need to wear a rucksack - the battery pack precludes hanging a pannier.
When I got home, I had to carry the A2B up a flight of stairs and wrestle its width and girth into my front room. You could not do this on a daily basis. 35kgs is alot of weight. Getting it down stairs is like controlling a runaway express train.
The weight totally determines how the bike actually handles. It is a sledgehammer to crack a proverbial nut. It's a very difficult bike to love if you're coming over from bicycles. If you're pushing on from a junction and encounter a pot hole, the driving rear wheel can bounce out and slam down - I think we call that axle-tramp, and might explain why such heavy tyres were chosen for an unsuspended rear triangle. At the front end, the suspension is supple enough, but suffers from dive under braking, a reminder that the budget has gone on the Berlin-sourced design (hence the groovy black) and the electric components, while other parts are lower than would be found on a conventional bike in this price range.
The saddle, seat post, derailleur (Shimano Alivio - nothing much on a £2k bike) handlebar, bell, disc brakes, chain and pedals are all straight out of bargain bicycle supply chain. The electric display, frame design and finish, tyres (Kenda 24 x 2.35, inflatable to 40 psi, slick tread), 36-spoke wheels, battery and charger, control systems and motor are all taken from somewhere burlier than your typical bicycle, even at the MTB end of the spectrum. They all feel like overkill for a bike that tops out at 16mph and is easily overtaken by any club rider training around Regent's Park, as I discovered.
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| The alternative: black graphics on grey, instead of grey on black |
So my verdict? There is another generation of speed pedelecs hitting non-EU markets (USA, Switzerland) with double the power. That would suit the Hybrid-24. I wanted more power more of the time. As it stands, it's an interesting experiment but it doesn't solve a problem, it just migrates it some place else.
In the EU, e-bikes are legally restricted to 250 Watt motors, and 25km/h top speed (you can go faster under your own stream, but you won't). So the only way ahead is to reduce weight. This is why Richard Thorpe spent a fortune at Go-Cycle to perfect a magnesium wheel for his e-bike, which is more fun to ride because so much lighter. His brief was to create a great bicycle with benefits. HeroEco has created, instead, a light scooter restricted to the mechanics of a bicycle. It is too heavy.
That said, I love HeroEco. They are just about to bring out an entirely new range of e-bikes. And they are bringing the mindset of a global company to the typically small scale, slightly shambolic world of the cycling industry. E-bikes have a huge, global future as an alternative to cars and petrol-engined motorbikes and scooters. They are already ubiquitous in China, which makes 29 million a year. Meanwhile, one in five bikes bought in Holland are now e-bikes, and the Germans are taking to them in droves. I've seen just three in London over the past three years, but even here they will come. They will get better and they'll catch on, it's just a matter of time. We're not there quite yet though, judging by the Hybrid 24.
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