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- Nov 12, 2015
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Top of Worcester Ridge facing East toward the White Mountains. Levo SL in the foreground.
I did a private eBike demo yesterday. Specialized brought their demo fleet to a local private trail network that I had never ridden before. We were hoping to try everything and then I was going to ride home on a Creo Evo but that did not happen . They didn’t have the Kenevo or the Kenevo SL (which might have been the ideal bike for where we were). They did have the Levo (full power) and the Levo SL and we rode both of those. I was trying to be more scientific with timing and videos and stuff, but I wrecked on the 2nd run and had to get patched up so the review is going to be a little shorter.
The first bike we rode was the Levo SL. I say we because our whole group decided to ride the same bike instead of mixing. Luckily we were able to ride the M, L and XL. I was on the XL, which I think was a bit bigger than I'd have chosen, but it was OK. The Levo SL is less powerful but it is the lightest bike Specialized has in the E mountain segment. Certainly one of the lightest E bikes you can buy. At 36 lbs for the S-Works version it weighs less than the Specialized Status MTB does. OK, you could buy enough State for a large family, with the money for one S-Works Levo SL, but it is light - for an e-bike. This was a bike that would have been delivered last fall and was not the most top of the line model. It had a FOX 34 Performance shock for example vs. the 36 Factory speced on the current year Levo SL S-Works.
The place we were riding is kind of built as an enduro shuttle place. Normally the owners shuttle bikes up on a four wheeler and they ride heavy Enduro and DH bikes there. I don't know percent grade of the road, but it was pretty steep and kind of a loose gravel. Not that great for climbing. Very glad to be motoring up that. I chose to use the MTB mode for the motor. There is also Eco and Turbo. The others rode Turbo. I was able to keep up without killing myself, but definitely had to work harder to keep with them. At the very top of the road I wanted to find the top of the ridge and see if there was a view. I found a narrow tight singletrack uphill that I know I could not have ridden on my Evil and with a little effort and a lot of help from the Brose motor I made it to the view spot seen above. What's interesting about a climb like this on the Levo SL is that it isn't the power of the motor alone that lets you get up there. It's that with some light pedaling and the pedal assist combined you can have really smooth power delivery that lets you climb difficult terrain without breaking traction. With the Levo SL I did not get any spooky moments despite being on unknown trails that I was not really comfortable with. I had really hoped to time segments here and see how the two bikes compared, but like I said, that didn't really happen. I liked this bike on the downhills, but felt like I was a bit underpinned for it.
I was a bit skeptical about riding such gnarly trails on this bike and was taking it kind of cautious at first. I left the motor on MTB mode for the downhill too. I wanted to see how much support it would give me on the downhill and would it do anything scary while riding down. I have experienced some spooky moments on STEPS and Bosch powered bikes where I did a little ratchet pedal and got a strong dose of motor support that was not really wanted.
Second bike was a 2nd Gen Levo. Specialized is now into a 3rd Gen bike that is pretty well updated from the one I rode from geometry to the motor to the software, but the concept and mission is the same. The Levo is what they call "full power". I think it kind of defines what we think an e-bike is. The bike I was on had a 500Wh battery and aluminum frame. More recent ones have a 700Wh battery, and of course you can choose between carbon and aluminum frames. This bike had lower spec parts than the SL. Level brakes for example and a Rock Shox fork that I'm not really sure what it was. Maybe a non-series or OEM unit. Honestly, this stuff would be fine for most riders, maybe more than they need, but yesterday, I would have preferred something a little more advanced.
What we really wanted to test though was the motor and all that goes with it. Again, while the rest of the crew ran Turbo I decided to stay in MTB and see how much stronger the support is than the SL. I really soft-pedaled and also tried to challenge the motor sometimes with choosing way too high gears. The Levo was soooo much faster than the SL. It honestly felt like we cut our climb time in half with significantly less effort. We didn't climb to the very top, but just to the top of the road and into the DH trails, The second I started to go downhill I felt the difference between the bikes. The Levo is so much heavier. Close to 50 lbs and you felt it instantly when cornering and especially when stopping. I think I also felt the difference in the ability of the suspension to control all of that. We took different trail than the first time which had some sharp quick climbs that I don't think I'd have made without the motor support. Certainly not on the first go. After a while I got used to the mass and then I decided that the bike was responding better to going faster. That's pretty much when I ate it on a drop. Not really sure what I landed on, but my arm was instantly covered in blood running like a river. My glove filled up and it was dipping out of the fingertips and running over the cuff. So at that point I just rode right down to the truck and called it a day..
So here's couple of things about the bikes. One the Sl my "support" rate was 86%. So what that means is that whatever wattage I supplied was augmented by 86%. So if I was producing 100 watts, then on average the bike was adding 86 watts on top of that. One the Levo my support level was 220%. We rode a little higher on the first ride (about 700 vert feet vs 600), but on both bikes somehow I used 60Wh of battery. The Levo SL had a 320 Wh battery, vs. 500 on the Levo (700 on current models though) so you can see how range would be far different between the two bikes. As for motors, it's pretty interesting. The Levo has a 250W motor while the SL is rated at 240W. That's what I think they call nominal output which means it could sustain that 240w or 250W output until the battery is drained. Peak power and peak torque is far different between the two though I wish I could remember the exact numbers, but I think peak tour on the SL is 30 (Newton-m? I forget what units they use) vs. 90 for the Levo. Huge difference.
Who are these bikes for? That's the real question. I kind of felt like the SL is for a person that wants to blend in with mountain bikers and ride with mountain bikers. You just want some help to be able to do what you used to be able to do. I think the Levo is for people that want to be Ebikers. I don't think you'd really want to ride with mountain bikers. You'd be spending too much time waiting. If you want to turn uphills into downhills, you want the Levo. Like the STEPS bike that I tried, the Levo reverses gravity. You can be doubling jumps when going uphill.
I think that you need to know who you are going to be riding with, if your friends already have full power eMTBs, I think a bike like the SL would be a mistake.
Specialized has two more eBikes that might have been more appropriate for where we were. They have the Kenevo (Levo Kenevo, get it? Give the guy that thought of that a raise) and the Kenevo SL. Kenevo is almost a battery powered DH bike. Full power motor, dual crown fork, lots of mass and huge brakes. Maybe this would be the perfect bike for where we wee riding. The Kenevo SL is much lighter, only 41 lbs, but the tradeoff is the smaller motor and the reduced battery capacity. It has a 170mm travel Fox 38 and a DPX rear shock. It looks to me like the perfect bike for where we were riding. I'm sure it would have been easier to pull up on drops, slow it down and change direction. Easier to take to the air and clear obstacles you don't want to smash through.
Oh and yeah I'd really like to try the Creo Evo.
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