Digital
Member
My amazing wife of many years has decided that she wants to move from her trusty FS Trek Fuel 90 onto an eBike.
Which is great! The challenge that we are having is finding an extra-small eBike. Louise is 4' 11" tall, and has had several spinal cord operations, along with a permanently injured left leg. These challenges have never stopped her from decades of biking, but when it comes to finding her an eBike, we are facing the following issues:
1) Size. Very few manufactures are making XS frame sizes in a full-suspension design
2) Weight. We are looking to keep it well under 40 pounds (18Kg.)
3) Stand-over height. We seek a low, or even down-swooping design (because of her injured leg)
4) A small battery and smaller output motor - which goes hand in hand with point #2
After more than a year, and countless hundreds of hours of online and in-shop discussion time, we have only found one design that ticks all of the boxes. Unfortunately, it only features a hub-drive design, which everyone tells us is weak.
The bike in question, a Mondraker F-Play 26 - https://mondraker.com/ca/en/2023-f-play-26 would be perfect if only it was available in a mid-drive motor arrangement, but that doesn't look to be something that Mondraker or any one else has made available...
In addition, Mondraker is a European brand, with extremely limited representation in Canada. The only way that we can even try the F-Play 26 is to order (purchase) it and then try it - there is no retail shop in Western Canada that warehouses these bikes. If it isn't up to the power-needs of my gal, we cannot return it, just (hope to) sell it off to someone else. Given that we're talkin about a substantial sum of money here, that's a dicey proposition.
So, here's me "throwing it out there" in the hope that there is another small-brand bike manufacturer that we've so far overlooked, who manufactures an eBike with the aforementioned specifications. I can tell you that none of the major bicycle manufacturers (Giant / Trek / Specialized / Santa Cruz / GT / Cannondale / Kona / Scott / Yeti / Pivot / Cube / Rocky Mt. / Canyon / Norco / Fischer / IBIS / K2 / Marin / etc...) have yet created such a mini-beast.
Given the number of petite women entering the mountain bike world, this surprises me.
Appreciate any input.
Andrew & Louise
Which is great! The challenge that we are having is finding an extra-small eBike. Louise is 4' 11" tall, and has had several spinal cord operations, along with a permanently injured left leg. These challenges have never stopped her from decades of biking, but when it comes to finding her an eBike, we are facing the following issues:
1) Size. Very few manufactures are making XS frame sizes in a full-suspension design
2) Weight. We are looking to keep it well under 40 pounds (18Kg.)
3) Stand-over height. We seek a low, or even down-swooping design (because of her injured leg)
4) A small battery and smaller output motor - which goes hand in hand with point #2
After more than a year, and countless hundreds of hours of online and in-shop discussion time, we have only found one design that ticks all of the boxes. Unfortunately, it only features a hub-drive design, which everyone tells us is weak.
The bike in question, a Mondraker F-Play 26 - https://mondraker.com/ca/en/2023-f-play-26 would be perfect if only it was available in a mid-drive motor arrangement, but that doesn't look to be something that Mondraker or any one else has made available...
In addition, Mondraker is a European brand, with extremely limited representation in Canada. The only way that we can even try the F-Play 26 is to order (purchase) it and then try it - there is no retail shop in Western Canada that warehouses these bikes. If it isn't up to the power-needs of my gal, we cannot return it, just (hope to) sell it off to someone else. Given that we're talkin about a substantial sum of money here, that's a dicey proposition.
So, here's me "throwing it out there" in the hope that there is another small-brand bike manufacturer that we've so far overlooked, who manufactures an eBike with the aforementioned specifications. I can tell you that none of the major bicycle manufacturers (Giant / Trek / Specialized / Santa Cruz / GT / Cannondale / Kona / Scott / Yeti / Pivot / Cube / Rocky Mt. / Canyon / Norco / Fischer / IBIS / K2 / Marin / etc...) have yet created such a mini-beast.
Given the number of petite women entering the mountain bike world, this surprises me.
Appreciate any input.
Andrew & Louise
