Dan, Gee, and Rachel Atherton, plus their engineering team, are going electric. The world-renowned mountain biking siblings are planning to release an electric mountain bike next year. The first of three preview videos, titled “Dyf-E”, shows the terrain they have in mind: the vertiginous and wild Dyfi Valley in central Wales.
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While the Athertons are known as World Championship and Enduro World Series champs, their e-MTB serves a different purpose: opening up vast amounts of backcountry terrain for exploration and adventuring. And the bike will be designed specifically for those gnarly, rooty, muddy MTB tracks.
“The bikes do have to be up to it,” says Gee Atherton in the video. “It’s just so harsh. If it can survive in Dyfi, I think it’s pretty good everywhere, really. In terms of testing, it’s a pretty solid base, I think.”
While other companies have been quick to jump on the e-MTB bandwagon, Atherton has taken its time and waited for the technology to mature. However, that’s not to say that they’re new to all things electric: Dan Atherton has been using e-MTBs as a tool for building trails in the Dyfi ‘backcountry’ for many years, and he immediately saw their potential for longer backcountry rides that would have been too exhausting for traditional bikes.
“It’s a part of the riding that really drew us here in the first place,” says Dan. “And it’s nice now that e-bikes allow you to just take it that bit further. If you can feel comfy down here, you’re pretty good.”
Performance was the biggest concern for the Athertons, who are used to flying through the air on lightweight frames. While the specifics of the battery and motor Atherton is using are yet to be confirmed, the video does mention its innovative A Range and S Range bikes as areas of design that ‘could’ be carried forward into e-MTB models.
To recap: the A Range makes use of laser-printed titanium lugs and custom carbon tubes, while the S Range copies these design techniques in aluminium and trims the price. How, exactly, these designs will accommodate a battery and motor is yet to be confirmed, but the modular nature of a lugged frame gives it a lot more wiggle room for bulky and technical components without altering the fundamental design, handling, and customisation potential.
As well as design, the Athertons have also focused on reliability, consulting tour guides and mechanics to understand common points of e-MTB failure so they can nip them in the bud.
We’ll learn more about the Athertons’ battery-powered project in the next couple of videos, which will shed light on the tech and design of the bikes themselves.
