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>> Court: This is the Optibike Pioneer Allroad, it's their first electric bike with pedal
assist which I'm really excited about. But it still maintains that sort of rugged, powerful
off road-ish design. It's actually almost kind of like a cross bike road bike, that's
why they call it the All Road, because its got these knobby tires. They're actually kind
of hybrid style here, but still pretty grippy, 26 inch, and they've got this suspension fork
in the front with lockout, just Suntour XCM. It's a 24 speed bike, so you've got three
rings in the front, eight in the back Shimano Acera, and these nice mechanical disc brakes.
So it kind of almost feels standard in terms of what you would get with a hardtail mountain
bike. But the drive system is what really sets it apart and makes it kind of special,
especially in the Optibike lineup. And the price, this bike is around three grand which
is a lot lower than some of their R Series bikes or even the new SIMBB, the super integrated
motorized bottom bracket bike they've got. So, instead of having everything on the mid-drive
here, they've actually broken the battery cell out, so that's kind of what differentiates
it from the SIMBB, um but it's a really good design. This is a 36 volt 10 and a half amp
hour Lithium Cobalt battery pack with really good energy density, you can take it off and
charge it off if you'd like, like this. There's the little charging slot. And when you're
ready to go you just pop it on like this, it snaps in, doesn't really rattle or anything
when you ride which is nice. I've seen some of these canister packs get a little jittery.
And then you can lock it, right, and then pull the key off. Iove that, because then
you don't have to, you know, this isn't jingling around like some bikes. So it's a good design.
And the motor is actually a 500 watt, geared, planetary geared mid-drive motor. Very, very
unique. And 500 watts is quite a bit, and you notice it. It's pretty powerful. It's
not the most responsive, and being that this leverages the chain, it does pull on the chain,
it really kind of depends on which gear you're in. Just like if you were peddling without
a motor, you know, you get in a hard gear and it's like [grunt noise] and you're straining
to get up a big hill. Same kind of thing here, only you have a 500 watt motor helping you.
So that's nice. You know, the other thing is when I first got on this and gunned it,
because it does have a throttle mode, its sort of a slower start. This is sort of a
slow, powerful motor verses a higher faster motor like on some of the R-Series bikes from
Optibike. Um, and that's just, it's interesting, it's quieter you know, and it's a little bit
lighter and that's kind of how they're able to position this bike, making it a little
bit more affordable. But worth noting, and I think you'll see that when I do the test
ride. So, the way you control this bike is using this nice little LCD monitor. It's powered
off the main battery pack so you don't really have to worry about batteries or anything.
It does not detach, so it's just solidly fixed there. Press this little M button, it pops
on, let's see if you can see that there. So right now it's showing speed, shows average
speed, max speed, odometer, trip distance, time and speed again, right. So, along with
your battery capacity remaining, and then essentially what you do is. You know, you
can go down to zero pedal assist, and that's just throttle only. Press that and the bike
goes. Or, five levels of pedal assist here, right. So, eco, city, tour, power, boost,
and the way that works is, at the very lowest end, eco, that's like 250 watt power, out
of your motor. And then you just sort of add 50 watts from there, so it's like 300 watts,
350 on tour, 400 on power and then like up to 500 on boost. So it's, kind of, you know,
about like that. Um, and you notice, as you go up the motor definitely kicks in more.
And the really cool thing about this bike is that, as you pedal, you know if you're
in pedal assist mode, you know, in my time riding it its definitely topped the 20 mile
per hour mark in pedal assist mode. So this is a bike that will probably go, you know,
25 miles per hour, kind of a speed pedelec design, almost. Um, and that's nice, so you
know, I would describe this overall as just really smooth and good value for this bike.
Iove that it's so balanced because, you know, the motor weight is really low right there
and the battery weight is really low. So if you pick the bike up in the middle, in fact
I'll try to do it. Pick the bike up, about the middle, there we go. You know, both wheels
come up at about the same, you know, it's just well balanced. And that nice straight
top tube here, you can mount that to like, car racks pretty easily, bike racks. It looks
just like a normal bike and you know, to make it even lighter, you can take that battery
off. It's not the lightest weight bike in the world. You know, it's like 49 pounds,
about. And they're still tweaking some of the motor and battery settings and stuff but
they've got, you know these guys are in it and they invest a lot of time and energy into
building their motors, they're pretty geeky about it and this is actually the first Optibike
that's being built overseas, all the rest of them are built right here in beautiful
Boulder Colorado. So, I feel like they have just a really good hands-on, you know, they're
a small company and stuff. So anyway, the cool thing about the system that they've got
here is that this bike is really easy to service, as you can imagine, you get a flat tire, you
take the wheel off just like normal, right. Quick release, no problem, super fast, super
easy. You need to get a tuneup done at a bike shop. No problem, like there's really nothing
different about this bicycle, except for the drive system which is really isolated. And
Iove that, right, so it just makes it kind of easier for everyone. And I might have mentioned
this but the shock has a lockout, so if you're, you know, riding around town and you don't
want that bob feeling, you just lock it out! So it's really a, I think, a thoughtfully
designed bike. I'm going to go ahead and hop on and uh, kickstand. Power it up, also, mechanical
disc brakes here, front and rear. I'm going to, oh and the other cool thing is, you know,
you can actually use the trigger throttle on this bike in addition to pedal assist,
at the same time. So let's say you're pedaling along, you're doing great in a higher gear
and then you stop at a stop sign going up a hill, you can just use that trigger, right
from there. You don't have to like, arrow down to zero, use the throttle, then arrow
back up to pedal assist. They both work, simultaneously, which is a great design. So, here we go. I'm
going to, trigger throttle there. I'm in sort of an easier gear because I was messing around
with hills a minute ago. I think it's a pretty sophisticated, pedalec sensor in there. It's
got more sensors, and it starts pretty quickly and it stops pretty quickly when you stop
pedaling. So that's nice. Nice quiet little thing, ha, it's kind of cool. It's in kilometers
per hour right now but I'm going to do a speed test. It's at 12... 17... [wind noises] 28...
and it just stopped. It just stopped at about 35, 35 kilometers per hour and that was in
pedal assist mode five. Well there you go, that's the Optibike Pioneer Allroad. Woo,
for the full written review on this and other Optibikes, I'll see you back at ElectricBikeReview.com