The Pivot Cycles E-MTB Lineup Defines This New Mountain Biking Category

Electric mountain biking (E-MTB) is a new cycling category unto itself. The common misconception is that E-MTBs are for lazy or out-of-shape people. Cycling’s unfortunate elitism manifests through shaming those who ride E-powered mountain bikes, believing that pure human power is somehow superior. There’s also the misguided belief that electric and “analog” bikes, as traditional bikes are now being called, are somehow an either/or proposition. As if riding an E-MTB makes analog bikes seem boring. The good news is that all of this misconception can easily be resolved by just riding an E-MTB. And for this story, I actually got to ride three of them from Phoenix, Arizona-based Pivot Cycles.

At a high level, what you’ll find is that E-MTBs slot alongside other categories of mountain biking. First we had cross-country, trail riding, enduro and downhill. Now we have a fifth category: E-MTB. None of these is objectively superior to the other. Personally, I’m passionate about all of them. Others will gravitate toward one or the other depending on personal preference and the terrain they ride. And then they’ll buy a bike to suit that riding style. So the E-MTB category isn’t just a mountain bike with a motor. In fact, it’s an entirely new and unique way to ride trails.

Technically, when referring to E-MTBs, we’re actually talking about hybrids. This class of electric bike requires pedaling. There’s no throttle. So human power must be applied in order to ride. It takes some effort, and that effort equals exercise. What I find is that I get the same workout on an E-MTB by riding twice the distance of an analog bike…and I actually have 4X the fun because the motor just adds so much dimension to the climbs, flats and even the descents.

Somewhat counterintuitively, I’ll often go to the highest power mode (Boost/Turbo) on descents so I can maximize acceleration out of corners. But it doesn’t drain the battery as you would on a climb. The biggest difference between an E-MTB and analog bike, though, is the climbs. Yes, they are easier because you have all that power on tap. But that power transforms climbs into an entirely new type of mountain biking terrain. They feel more like a descent where you’re working against gravity. Rather than struggling to maintain forward momentum, you actually have to handle the bike going uphill. You’re picking lines and absorbing obstacles. You’re braking into corners and being mindful of carrying speed out of them. You’re timing the pedals to avoid rock strikes while keeping the power running to the rear wheel, lest you lose momentum and falter. It truly has to be experienced to be understood.

So who needs an E-MTB? Everyone does. What I mean is that everyone can benefit from riding one. Certainly, there is a cohort of the population who could not otherwise ride a mountain bike on trails without the electric assist. If you’ll forgive the crude analogy, these folks (older, disabled, lacking fitness) are like men who need medication to treat erectile dysfunction. It’s just not happening without it. And then there’s everyone else, from weekend warriors to top professionals. They may not need the prescription, but it still enhances the experience in a material way. I’m referring, of course, to riding an E-MTB. It’s an enhanced mountain biking experience regardless of your background, fitness or ability level.

That said, not all trails are open to E-MTBs. In Park City, Utah, where there is about 500 miles of singletrack, they are all-but forbidden save for the rare exceptions of age and medical conditions. This actually makes sense because the trail system is already struggling to handle existing trail users. It simply cannot accommodate another form, especially given the speeds that E-MTBs can carry. However, just down the way in Heber, Utah, the Wasatch Trails Foundation has embraced E-MTBs. All new trails being built (miles and miles of them each year) are being designed with E-MTBs in mind. This equates to a number of bi-directional flow trails, such as Middle Earth, with plenty of visibility and a superb flow in either direction.

One of the premier E-MTB destinations in the US, however, is Phoenix, Arizona, where pretty much every trail system either expressly permits E-MTBs or else passively accommodates them. This was a fortunate coincidence, as I started testing a Pivot Cycles Shuttle AM (all-mountain) last summer in Park City, shortly before fracturing my wrist. That incident set me back a few months. During that time, however, Pivot launched two additional E-MTBs: The Shuttle SL (super light) and The Shuttle LT (long travel). So I made a trip to Phoenix in January (prime riding season) to properly experience the entire line.

Pivot Cycles Shuttle AM

The first thing to note about Pivot’s E-MTB lineup is that two of the three models (AM and LT) use the same Shimano EP8 motor with its maximum-capacity, 726 watt-hour battery and 85N-m of torque. For those familiar with power measurement, this translates into a constant 250 watts to the rear wheel over many hours of use. Shimano’s is the best system I’ve ridden in terms of consistency, power output, reliability, battery life and the overall rider experience. Not surprisingly, the Japanese component manufacturer nailed the E-MTB system, and it’s quickly become the gold standard. As with drivetrains, any bike builder can integrate the system with their frame designs, and consumers will be immediately familiar with how each model functions.

The EP8 system includes a power button that is typically mounted on the top tube, a controller on the left side that toggles between four power modes—Walk, Eco, Trail and Boost—and a computer on the right side that displays the current riding mode, speed, battery life and other data. These bikes max out at 20mph, which is plenty for riding trails. I think 28mph is also an ideal speed for road and commuter bikes. Using the Shimano E-Tube mobile app, you can connect to the system wirelessly and customize how each mode deploys power and torque. It’s a cool feature, though the default settings are just fine for me.

One of the key rides I did on the Shuttle AM was a classic Park City shuttle ride (the Pivot’s namesake) known as the WOW Trail. It drops about 10 miles and more than 2,000 vertical feet down to the town of Midway, Utah. The trail parallels a beyond-category (HC) road climb that’s often hosted the finale of the Tour of Utah. This is how the ride is typically shuttled. But no need with the Pivot Shuttle. I still parked at the drop-off point and started the descent from there. Again, this is part of the Wasatch Trails Foundation trail system, which means it is open to E-MTBs. This first time I actually rode back up the asphalt in full Boost mode (though the Garmin shut off before the climb). Regardless of the power assist, this machine still weighs more than 45 pounds, and the grade averages about 10 percent. I still had to work for it, though nothing close to what it’s like on a road bike. By the end of the ride, I still had two bars of power left in the battery.

For my second Shuttle test on the WOW Trail, I dropped down to the bottom, did a small loop in the adjacent trail system (Dutch Hollow) and then rode back up WOW Trail. I’d never done this on an analog bike, and the climb actually proved to be the highlight of the ride. So much so that I titled it “How to Change Your Ride” on Strava, a reference to the Michael Pollen book, How to Change Your Mind, which explores the mind-expanding benefits of psychedelic substances. That’s how it felt…a profound feeling that this 26-mile, singletrack ride with 3,500 feet of climbing, which spanned about two-and-a-half hours, had expanded my mountain biking consciousness. I still burned more than 1,200 calories and laid down some great Strava times…because Strava has a parallel set of leader boards for E-bikes. It felt like I was discovering the sport all over again, as I did back in 1990.

Pivot’s original Shuttle E-MTB debuted in 2017, making it the earliest entrant to the E-MTB market among the boutique mountain biking segment. The 2022 model, which I tested, features 140mm of rear-wheel travel with a Fox Factory Float X shock and 160mm of front-wheel travel with the Fox Factory E-MTB 38. I rode the Team Build with a Shimano XTR component group, which includes beefy XTR four-piston brakes and 203mm x 180mm rotors, front and rear. This build retails for $11,899, and the Ride Build with lesser components goes for $9,599.

This part of the test took place in Park City during the months of June and July of 2022. It was the only E-MTB model Pivot offered at the time, so that’s the bike I rode. The frame design is similar if not identical to the one that debuted in 2017. The shock is mounted high on the top tube, and the down tube is just massive. Anyone’s first impression is pretty much, “Whoa, that’s a huge down tube.” This design prevents it from accommodating a water bottle cage, which means you have to use some type of hydration pack. I’m more of a water bottle rider, but the electric power and lower center of gravity makes wearing a pack very do-able. That said, the original Shuttle (now the Shuttle AM) struggles with its aesthetic. It’s just not an attractive design. It also ends up in the messy middle. Now that Pivot offers the SL and LT variants (keep reading), I’m not sure the AM is entirely viable. In my Downcountry Dream Build story, I argued that bikes in the 130-150mm travel range exist in a no-man’s land. These bikes don’t excel at any aspect of mountain biking. They are mediocre at everything. Now that I’ve ridden each of Pivot’s E-MTBs, that’s pretty much my (entirely personal) assessment of the AM. It’s fun. But the SL and LT are way more fun. It just depends on your riding style and preferred terrain.

Fast forward to January of 2023. Park City is experiencing one of the best early ski seasons in history. But Phoenix is perhaps the best winter mountain biking destination in North America, and it happens to be the global headquarters for Pivot Cycles. I took advantage of this convenient fact to test ride the Pivot Shuttle SL and LT on the company’s home turf while Park City’s trails were buried in many feet of snow.

Pivot Cycles Shuttle LT

The Shuttle LT and SL were both released around August of 2022. They represent the next generation in Pivot’s E-MTB lineup. The frame designs look more like analog bikes with a low shock mount that leaves room for one bottle cage on the down tube and a second set of bottle cage mounts under the top tube for compatible toolsets. This enables you to relocated water and gear from a pack or jersey onto the bike. My preference of late is to wear baggy jerseys with nothing in them, such that they flap in the wind like the days of riding a BMX bike around my neighborhood. I pair that with baggy shorts like those from Rapha with side pockets that can hold a phone and energy food. The LT and SL both allow for this, which is a huge plus.

For the Shuttle LT test ride, we departed right from Pivot HQ and rode less than a mile to a trailhead for South Mountain Park. Fun fact: this is one of the largest municipally managed parks in the country at 16,000 acres with more than 50 miles of trail. It is chock full of the classic Sonoran Desert Saguaro cactus, along with so much jumping cholla and prickly pear. The terrain ranges from smooth and flowy to burly and chunky, and it’s all quite fast…especially on an E-MTB. We rode about 20 miles with 1,500 feet of climbing and averaged 13.2 mph.

The Shuttle LT design was inspired by the very successful Pivot Firebird downhill bike. It features 160mm of rear-wheel travel, and that’s paired with a Fox Factory E-MTB 38 fork with 170mm of travel. This amount of travel allows you to truly ride in the travel range, especially up front. One of the unique behaviors of E-mountain biking is that you rarely pedal with the saddle at your typical ride height. There’s a dropper post, of course, so you’ll tend to pedal with a lower saddle height because you don’t need all that human-powered torque to turn the pedals. And because you’ll be perfectly positioned for rolling terrain with no need to make saddle adjustments. The cranks are also shorter at just 160mm for the same reason. This virtually eliminates pedal strikes and enables you to keep the power down over rock gardens and the like. This is how E-mountain biking should be.

Pivot Cycles Shuttle SL

The Shuttle SL is the most recent addition to the Pivot E-MTB line. This is a new sub-category that just started to appear in 2022. These sub-40-pound bikes are starting to blur the line between electric and analog. After all, we pedal 35-pound enduro bikes uphill on the regular. Now we have the option of electric power in a range of outputs from a bike that weighs about the same.

However, this is not a Shimano system. Rather, it uses the Fazua Ride 60 motor and battery, which integrate rather surreptitiously into the bottom bracket and downtube. It produces an impressive 450 watts with 430 Wh and, the system itself weighs about nine pounds. The controls are similar to the Shimano system with three power modes. A key difference, though, is that the non-power (Walk) mode provides zero pedaling resistance. When it’s off or out of battery, it’s very similar to pedaling an analog bike.

The SL fits into the trail bike category with 132mm of rear-wheel travel and a standard 150mm Fox 36 Grip 2 fork (with custom eMTB tune). My test ride took place east of Phoenix in the Hawes trail system. This is flowy and scenic desert singletrack with Saguaro cactus all along the trails. The SL definitely rides more like an analog bike than the AM or LT. The more manageable weight allows it to rotate through turns more naturally, and subtle handling inputs from the rider actually have an effect. On the climbs, I’d cycle through the different drive modes, particularly the simulated “dead battery” mode, and found that it was still quite pedal-able. It’s not crazy to think that you’d intentionally do a climb without power assist to get an extra workout.

The bottom line for the SL is that this model symbolizes the start of a new E-MTB sub-category. There will come a point when these E-MTB bike weights get so low—30ish pounds—that you’ll decide on a ride-by-ride basis if you want electric power or not. You’ll do rides or sections with power and others without. It will be quite fluid, and it will be difficult to discern whether a bike has a motor or not, both visually and from the whirring electric motor sound that you won’t actually hear. This will take another few years, but it’s coming. And I’ll be psyched when we get there. The SL is a great first step.

In the meantime, the ideal E-MTB category for me is the Shuttle LT with the Shimano system. At this moment in time, I still equate E-MTB with enduro-style riding. You’ve got a motor. Why not have maximum suspension and the right geometry to match it? That’s the sweet spot for me.