- Building on its expertise of racing in the automotive sector, McLaren has unveiled a range of four high-performance electric mountain bikes, with the flagship ‘600’ model for the US market designed to be the world’s most powerful trail-legal eMTB.
- Designed by the same team who worked on the McLaren Artura hybrid supercar, the electric bikes carry many of the same attributes as its supercar range, such as a high power to weight ratio, with swathes of carbon fibre aiding this.
- Its range of eMTBs starts at £7,200, for the Sport 250 model, rising to £9,600 for the Extreme 250.
McLaren enters the premium electric bike market
These bikes aren’t just off-the-shelf electric MTBs with a McLaren badge stuck on, as they have several features that make them faithful to their automotive counterparts. Firstly, thanks to McLaren’s own expertise in carbon fibre, all frames are carbon-based, keeping a low overall weight and a high power to weight ratio. All bikes also offer a touch-screen digital dash, reminiscent of those you’d find on one of McLaren’s road cars.
The relatively cheaper McLaren Sport model takes a hardtail form, while the McLaren Extreme opts for a full-suspension setup to tackle the toughest mountain bike trails. The 250W electric motor available in each can deliver an impressive peak torque figure of 121Nm, which should make hill climbs a breeze too. The third-party motor has been tuned by McLaren, with four specific modes: eco, trail, sport, and race. Owing to legislation surrounding the power of street-legal electric bikes, only the USA will be able to purchase the bikes with a more powerful 600W motor offering an increased 161Nm of torque. This motor, McLaren says, will make its eMTB one of the most powerful models you can buy.
McLaren says that stock of its new eMTBs will be limited, though you can check out the range and pricing for yourself, here.
