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Jeep e-bikes: racing uphill with 1,500 watts

24.8.2020

Translation: Jessica Johnson-Ferguson

Fat tyres meet a fat battery. That’s what happens when car manufacturer Jeep makes e-bikes. Prepare for new horizons if you’re the outdoorsy type.

Something always looks off when you see an e-bike in traffic. It’s just that a person pedalling with such ease shouldn’t be travelling at such high speeds. This visual disconnect has now been brought from an urban environment to rugged terrain courtesy of e-bike manufacturer QuietKat. Carmaker Jeep liked this idea so much that it put its name to it.

Jeep is jumping on the bandwagon after a handful of traditional car brands have done the same. Harley-Davidson producing e-bikes? Maybe. It all depends on the new CEO’s market strategy. Ducati has come up with the Scrambler: a collapsible e-bike designed to roam pedestrian areas in urban environments. And now Jeep wants to make off-road adventures electric.

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A bicycle for rough rides

QuietKat, the manufacturer behind Jeep’s e-bikes, has clearly drawn design inspiration from the car with the iconic front. «Big, wide, heavy and strong» seems to have been the motto during the development of the bikes.

The cooling grille – one of Jeep’s trademarks
Source: Auto Kunz/pbgraphy

Understandably, the iconic cooling grille is missing. After all it would’ve been tricky to adapt it for a bike. Nevertheless, QuietKat definitely slipped in some of the car’s driving traits. The electric bicycle features 4.8-inch, or 12.1 cm wide tyres, with a diameter of 26 inches – that’s about 66 cm. The off-road bike comes in two frame sizes, 17 or 19 inches. The Jeep Bike is driven by a Bafang motor, which has a power output of 750 watts. However, at peak power the output can be increased to 1500 watts. Bafang, internationally known as 8Fun, also produces the motors for the Ducati e-bikes.

One battery charge should cover a range of up to 40 miles, i.e. 34 kilometres. Proper Jeeps are not only known for their rough interior and mass – one Jeep weighs just over two tons – but also for being able to master almost any terrain without jolting about the passengers of the vehicle too much. QuietKat has incorporated this feature by installing a Fire-Link suspension. And what’s strange is that nobody seems to know this system apart from QuietKat. But the car manufacturer Jeep trusts the system.

The manufacturer's website provides more insight. Fire-Link, sometimes also spelled FireLink, describes a combination of two types of suspension:

Front: RST Air Suspension Inverted Fork (150 mm)
Rear: RockShox Monarch RL (150 mm)

A potential winter vehicle

The fact that QuietKat is launching a Jeep e-bike isn’t hot news. First reports were published in February 2020. At the time, it wasn’t only the name of the manufacturer that made the headlines but also the fact that the bike is very expensive. Its basic version costs 5,899 US dollars, that’s 5,384 francs. Should you want a Remote Dropper Seatpost, an electrically adjustable saddle post, it will set you back an additional 278 dollars.

The bike will be available internationally from September. No dates have yet been announced for the start of sales in Switzerland. But I do have an idea for the launch in winter: heated handlebars. Although this would eat away at the battery, it would also mean that you could be out and about in wintertime. The fat tyres and a long range would also make sense for this endeavour. Incidentally, the inspiration for heated handlebars comes from electric motorcycle manufacturer Energica and its Ribelle.

And last but not least: the Jeep e-bike comes with a torque of 160 Newton metres. This beats the latest Yamaha Ténéré, which was designed to be used on the same terrain, by only blasts 68 Newton metres into the dirt.

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Dominik Bärlocher

Senior Editor

dominik.baerlocher@digitecgalaxus.ch

Journalist. Author. Hacker. A storyteller searching for boundaries, secrets and taboos – putting the world to paper. Not because I can but because I can’t not.

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