The instant you touch the brakes, the electric assist is cut. Tektro hydraulic disc brakes are common on e-bikes since they are easily wired into an e-bike system. They straightened up easily without tools. That means we banged them on the trail hard enough to bend the guards. The single front ring has guards on both sides, and we found them very helpful. The wheels are fitted with disc rotors and Alex rims shod with CST tires. Attached to the frame is a RockShox XC30 TK 100mm-travel fork set up for a 27.5-inch wheel. The front half of the aluminum frame is pretty beefy with a thoroughly modern, tapered head tube seen on advanced machinery.
But, heavy loads (those that stifle a hub motor) allow the Peak to shine.Īs a mountain bike, the Peak has a relatively modest frame and cycle parts. On flat dirt or on pavement, the Peak’s center drive doesn’t offer the eye-opening assist and instant acceleration of the Izip Dash with its more pedestrian hub motor. Unless you are really abusing the assist, you should get at least 15 miles of hard trail riding in on a charge. At 13 miles off-road with nearly 2000 feet of climbing, the battery level had just dropped to one bar. We tended to ride the Peak in level three or four most of the time, but even so, the basic 8.7 amp-hour battery has excellent range at these higher levels of assist. The steeper the hills, the more impressive the Peak is. Thanks to the high-torque design of the assist motor, the harder you load it, the stronger it feels. We do like the simplicity of a single shifter, and the lack of a front derailleur surely helps with the attractive price point. Still, a lower first gear and the option of a larger front ring would be nice.
Since the Peak only has a single ring in front, the gear selections are limited, but there is nevertheless a nice range between high and low. When you shift gears in level four you can hear the power snatch at the drive chain. For straight climbs, the 350-watt motor offers outstanding support. Level four is when the boost gets serious. When you hit level three, the assist is strong enough to be significant on level ground or on mild to strenuous climbs. It is a good setting for level terrain or even mild climbs. At level two the assist is a little more energetic. Basically, it makes up for the Peak being heavier than a pedal bicycle. The Peak has a throttle, but unlike many machines with a throttle (where a no-assist setting allows the throttle to provide assist on demand), the Peak throttle works at any level of assist and elevates the support to the absolute maximum, but only up to 8 mph. All four levels of assist sense pedaling and add assist automatically. The handlebar control allows you to toggle the assist level between one and four, turn on the display screen, and select information screens. There is a soft-button on switch on the battery case, and you start the system and activate the display with an on button that is part of the handlebar-mounted control unit. The battery case attaches to the frame tube where a bottle cage would normally reside. The brains of the outfit are all tucked in with the drive unit or in the battery case, so there is no external controller. The idea is the same: mount the assist unit in the middle of the chassis and allow it to use the derailleur and cassette to essentially give the drive unit a nine-speed transmission. The look is somewhat close, but this is not a Bosch drive. Most of the other e-bikes in the Currie Technologies Izip line have hub motors of one sort or another, but the Peak has a Currie-spec, 350-watt, TransX, mid-drive, high-torque assist unit with proprietary software. This is an e-bike tailor-made for climbing, so it is more than aptly named. In this case we were happy to find that the rest of the bike fully deserves an assist package this impressive. When an e-bike is destined to spend its time on pavement, the advantages of a mid drive are not so pronounced, but the Peak is a mountain bike with plenty of dirt in its future, and the benefits in handling off-road make the mid drive a huge deal for a bike that retails for $2999. Dedicated mid-drive e-bikes are the absolute latest in production models.
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