Electric mountain bikes and the suspension travel they’re equipped with is a pretty open and shut case for many. If a bike is kitted with a motor to do most of the hard work for you, why not load it up with all of the suspension? However, Specialized aims to buck that trend with the new Turbo Levo R, a bike that Spesh reckons creates its own genre dubbed ‘Electric Rally’.
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For the most part, the Levo R takes everything from the very well-established Levo, but whittles it down to shed weight and boost agility. With that, the Levo R boasts 140mm of suspension travel up front, combined with 130mm at the rear, but Specialized says that the Levo R can weigh as little as 18.8kg, all while running the full-power Turbo 3.1 motor.
That does mean that it’s a bit of a power split in the range, however. Standard models rock 810W of peak power and 105Nm of torque, so it’s right up to date with the brand’s recent over-the-air update package. The range-topping S-Works model then gets 850W of peak power and 111Nm of torque.
While there are a lot of similarities between the regular Levo and the Levo R, the Levo R actually benefits from its very own frame design. It uses Specialized’s FACT carbon, gets the Wattage Cottage battery enclosure, and SWAT storage, but the brand says that it has cut 530g off the frame weight, which apparently makes for a more spritely ride. The Levo R then runs solely on 29-inch wheels.
With an emphasis on agility running throughout the Levo R’s press release, the bike gets the geometry to match. An S4 (large equivalent) frame rocks a 480mm reach, a 65-degree head tube angle, a 77-degree seat tube angle, and a 447mm chainstay. But as expected from a modern Spesh bike, much of this is adjustable with headset cups offering +/- one degree of head angle adjustment, a flip chip adjusts the bottom bracket height, and there’s a flip chip at the chainstay, providing 6mm of chainstay adjustment.
Smaller travel but a magic carpet ride
Introduced on the 15th iteration of the Stumpjumper, the Levo R gets Specialized’s GENIE technology, but it’s tuned especially for this bike. It works similarly to other GENIE shocks, with an inner and outer air chamber that provides a linear characteristic throughout the first 70% of the shock’s stroke. Once the GENIE band inside the shock reaches that 70% mark, it blocks the outer air chamber, resulting in a more progressive kinematic throughout the final 20% of the travel.
As a result of this fancy tech, Specialized says that the bike benefits from more control in the bulk of the shock’s stroke, but with plenty of bottom-out resistance for those heavier hits. With that in mind, the 130mm of rear squish should feel like more.
If ‘Electric Rally’ sounds like your kind of thing, prices for the Levo R start at £6,799 and go up to £12,499 for the S-Works build.
