Merida are a power house in the world of bikes, and especially in e-bikes. In my mind, they paved the way for eMTBs in Australia with their eOne-Sixty 900E in 2017. The bike looked great, had an excellent build kit, modern motor and handled like a long travel mountain bike should. It was also super competitively priced, helping gain traction around the country. And by all accounts, the Merida eOne-Sixty 900E did that around the world as well.
Merida updated their range of eMTBs once since then, with carbon front triangles, internal batteries and shorter travel models. Earlier this year Merida released their third generation of eMTBs, with two new models of the eOne-Sixty and a new eOne-Forty – with huge updates to the travel, handling and design concepts for their eMTB range. I spoke to some of the designers at their media launch at Hidden Vale Adventure Park in Queensland, including product manager Benjamin Diemar, about the timeline of eMTBs with Merida.
‘In 2014 Merida had no eMTBs, they were really focused on e-trekking bikes, the e-systems at the time were also not great solutions for an eMTB. Shimano introduced the E8000 unit to us quite early, and with this drive unit we could achieve a geometry that makes sense, to ride more like a regular mountain bike’ ‘This was especially important with the rear end, so we could have the shorter chain stays’ added Hannes Noller from the design team.
‘We started the development of the first generation of the eOne-Sixty and our Taiwan HQ
