Polish bike brand, Rondo, has entered the e-gravel market. Known for its all-terrain drop bar bikes, it was inevitable that Rondo would eventually develop a mid-drive motor integrated frame.
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The IOON might not look like many of its e-gravel category rivals, but it remains true to the Rondo design philosophy of form following function. Rondo’s frame tube shapes are designed for specific mechanical and aerodynamic properties, creating an e-gravel bike that looks very different from its competitors.
Viewed in profile, the IOON’s most striking feature is the interrupted seat tube design. Instead of a traditional gravel bike seat tube, which mostly runs straight to the bottom bracket, the IOON’s seat tube has a distinct kink halfway, meeting the down tube way ahead of the bottom bracket.
The design might look unusual, but it offers significant seat-tube flex benefits without sacrificing overall frame strength. For a gravel bike, the interrupted seat-tube design is ideal: delivering excellent small bump absorption on corrugated surfaces, while helping to reduce rider fatigue.
Like other Rondo carbon gravel frames, the IOON’s top tube doesn’t follow a straight line towards the head tube, with a pronounced kink at about three-quarters of the tube length. It’s all a testament to Rondo’s belief that carbon should be shaped to optimize its material properties, instead of following the legacy tube shapes created by decades of aluminium, steel, and titanium fabrication.
Meticulous industrial design has enabled Rondo to have the interrupted seat-tube feature and Fazua’s Ride 60 drive system. Rated at 60Nm, Fazua’s Ride 60 mid-drive motor can deliver peak pedalling assistance of up to 430W. It’s light, too, at only 1.96kg (4.3lb), drawing power from a 430Wh battery pack. Total system weight with motor and battery comes to 4.2kg (9.2lb).
Despite its stout tube profiles, Rondo IOON is designed for the best possible balance of aerodynamics, required frame durability for endurance gravel route exploration, and all the fabled ride compliance that composite materials have the potential to deliver.
The Rondo Twintip carbon fork also allows riders to choose some degree of geometry adjustment. A flip-chip embedded in the dropout eyelets can quicken steering responses for road riding, or create a more forgiving steering set-up for technical trails and loose gravel descents.
Rondo’s IOON e-gravel range is launching at a base price of £5,999, with several build options to accommodate rider needs and requirements.
