Specialized Launches Holy Grail Of Transport E-Bikes: A Light One

During a Zoom-style video presentation for Specialized’s new transport e-bike, the U.S. brand’s Mark Cote ran up and down stairs with one. This is not normal for e-bikes. The Turbo Vado SL, launched May 12, weighs just 33lbs or, as the company claims, it’s “40% lighter than the average traditional e-bike.”

That’s make-or-break for those who have to carry e-bikes—in and out of apartment buildings, for instance—and the company’s SL category (it stands for “super light”) may help shift perceptions of what e-bikes are all about. Heft no longer has to be one of them.

Specialized has lighter e-bikes in its Turbo stable—the Creo S-Works Founders Edition tips the scales at just 24lbs (and for which you’ll be lighter of $17,000, too) but that’s a carbon-framed sport-oriented road bike, the Vado SL is an aluminum-framed car substitute, equipped with fenders, luggage rack and lights fore and aft.

“Our plan was to launch the Vado SL in front of the press—with one launch in America in the Bay Area and another launch in Europe,” says Marco Sondreger, Specialized’s e-bike product leader.

“We were going to ride bikes with journalists, through beautiful nature, and have fun together with dinners and presentations.”

COVID-19 put paid to that, hence the Zoom presentation to journalists instead.

Sondreger is a Swiss national, based—with 50 others—in Specialized’s e-bike facility in Cham, Switzerland. Housed in a restored former paper mill, built in 1957, the facility is a R&D hub and also where the e-bike motors are developed and built.

“We’re based in Switzerland because it’s very attractive for hiring,” says Sondreger.

“We hire people from across Europe—we’re between France, Italy, Germany, and Austria. Forty of the team here are not Swiss.”

Specialized is a billion-dollar corporation, based in Morgan Mill, California, and founded by current CEO Mike Sinyard at the height of the 1970s “bike boom” in 1974.

A relatively late starter in e-bikes, the company sees a bright future for bicycle motorization. It has had an e-bike facility in Switzerland for seven years and moved into its current high-ceilinged premises four years ago. The building was used by Papieri Cham right up until the firm’s move to Italy in 2015.

“Cham produced paper for beer labels, for Heineken and others,” says Sondreger.

“When they moved out we were the first to move in.”

The 250-watt Vado motor—the same as the Creo motor—was designed in-house. It offers “two times you,” says Specialized’s publicity, doubling the effort put in, or “you only faster.”

“Yes, the Vado is light, but it’s not just about the carrying factor,” stressed Sondreger.

“It’s also about handling: you feel a large difference when you are riding the bike, turning the bike on a windy road. If you get out of the saddle, for example, if you pedal standing up, the bike doesn’t have that floppy left-to-right feeling. It just feels like a normal bike.”

Normal bike. As in a bike without motors. “Mechanical” bikes—that’s one of the terms used for cornflake-powered bicycles. Others in the industry favor “acoustic” cycle—this is a nod to the difference between an acoustic and an electric guitar. Or should it be m-bike, for manual (or mechanical) bicycle?

Will m-bikes go the way of the manual typewriter? Museum pieces, ridden by re-enactors but far from the mainstream? This has long been the prediction of e-bike evangelist Hannes Neupert who has been plugging e-bikes for nearly 30 years.

Neupert runs ExtraEnergy, a German non-profit consultancy that has been promoting battery-powered cycling since 1992. In 2010 he told a Light Electric Vehicle conference that traditional bicycles would go the way of the dodo:

“Electrification will kill the mechanical bicycle within a few years like it has killed many other mechanical products. Bicycles will remain as historical items hanging on the wall.”

Neupert described the pedal-powered bicycle as likely to become a “fossilized cult object” similar to the washing mangle, the mechanical typewriter, and the mechanical camera. He is convinced that the majority of consumers would rather be battery-boosted up hills rather than tax their muscles alone.

“Any analysis of development trends over the last 100 years shows a strong and unmistakable trend towards electrification,” he believes.

And Sondreger agrees.

“There’s absolutely no reason why you would not have some sort of engine on a bicycle,” he tells me by Skype.

“There’s no reason to just use your own muscle power. We’re at the point where we can build this lightweight bike with ‘two times you’ added. You still get a work-out. It’s not about being lazy on the bike; to me, it’s about being faster.”

He adds: “I get all of my fitness—and I’m pretty fit right now—from e-bike riding. My heart rate is as high as I would riding a standard bike, but I’m going faster. And covering more miles means I get a further radius. So I ride more. Even though I just ride for the same two hours I might have done previously, now I cover more miles in those two hours.”

The future for bicycles is “all going E,” he says.

“It’s just us amplifying the human as a machine. Together, you and the bike, you’re becoming one, and you’re riding faster.”

The Vado SL with its 240-watt motor is puny compared to the 500-watt motor on the company’s existing Levo range of transportation e-bikes, but it has a whopping range of 80 miles and the doubling of effort (Vado is four times effort) is ideal for the European market—which has restrictions on the speed and power of e-bikes—says Sondreger.

There are two models available, the SL 4.0 for £2,499 and the 5.0 for £3,299.

Expensive? Not so, says Sondreger.

“When you look back at how much cellphones used to cost in the early days, you could get one free with a contract, but now smartphones are over 1000 bucks, and people pay this.

“E-bikes change lives,” adds Sondreger.

“You get that smile on your face. And compared to cars or public transportation, e-bikes are cheap. Filling up a gas tank is 100 bucks, a few months later and you’ve spent 1,000 bucks. E-bikes get people from A to B at a decent cost.”