Rivian’s ALSO E-Bike Is The Coolest E-Bike I’ve Ever Seen
So, companies like Tesla, Lucid, and Rivian have completely transformed the way cars are made and how they work. Now, a new startup called Also is trying to do the same thing, but for ebikes and other smaller electric vehicles. And today, we’ve got the pleasure of taking a look at Also’s very first model. It’s an ebike that’s going on sale next year. And I’ve got to say, it is without a doubt the coolest ebike I have ever experienced. So, stick around. I’m going to show you everything about the Also eBike. I’m going to take you on a tour of all its coolest features. And I’m going to tell you how it rides. And later in the video, I’m going to give you a little sneak peek into what else Also is working on. Because this company is not just doing ebikes. [Music] So before I show you also’s first bike, I thought we should get into the backstory of this company. What exactly is Also and what is it trying to do? And I thought what better place to do that than in front of all these prototypes they have on display here. Also started as a project within Riven that was building an electric bike. Then at some point they spun that out into its own company. So what’s also trying to do? The idea is to reimagine the ebike from the ground up in the same way that Rivian and Tesla and some of these Chinese brands did for cars. And I think the throughine between all of them. The reason that a Tesla or Riven or some of these new Chinese brands feel better, feel like an improvement over cars of the past is that all these companies started from scratch. They didn’t have to take a gas car, a platform designed for engines, and kind of re-engineer it for the electric era. They just started from a clean sheet and they decided what should go in a car. And that’s what also is trying to do with ebikes and with other vehicles is throw out everything you know about ebikes and build one from scratch. Also came out of Stealth earlier this year and up until now, we didn’t know exactly what they were working on. They said they were going to be smaller than car vehicles. Everybody kind of assumed that would mean ebikes or scooters or things like that. But now we actually know. And now we can take a look at also first product. Everything you see here pretty much probably except for like the tires is designed and developed inhouse. You have dual suspension, a really powerful motor in the middle there in this really interesting looking square compartment and overall a really appealing I think looking ebike. There were some spy shots that came out that were of a really blurry also ebike and the internet and I too was kind of like that’s that’s it really. But in person, this thing looks really, really cool and unlike any other ebike on the market. You’ve got a very Rivian like headlight. And I asked them, was this intentional? And they said, yeah, you know, it is a little bit of a call back to our foundation, you know, to the company where we started out. So, if we come around to the back here, you can see you’ve got an integrated brake light. And actually when you squeeze the brakes, boom, there you go. Speaking of braking, enormous disc brakes front and rear. So, let me take you on a little tour of this cockpit. So, over here you have this blue button that cycles through the different menus on the screen. I don’t know if you can hear that, but it is a very satisfying and very clicky button. You have this dial which does your volume. Then coming over to this side here is throttle. I don’t know if you can hear that. Vroom vroom. And here is how you change your pedal assist settings. So this will determine how much power is going to the wheels. This actually has not just a brake light and a headlight. It has turn signals. This little trigger behind the brake. So let me show you how that works. Hit that and boom, you got a turn signal. Like I said, almost everything here was designed completely in-house and that includes the motor. This is not your standard offtheshelf, you know, Bosch unit that you’ll see in a lot of other ebikes. Also spent a lot of time and a lot of uh days engineering this very special drive unit. So, as you can see, the pedal, the crank is not actually attached to this belt drive. You got the pedal down here and then you’ve got the belt drive up there. Why did they do that? So, there are actually two different motors housed inside of here. You have one where the pedal slots in, then you have another that’s driving the wheels. And so, what this means is that there’s actually no mechanical connection between the pedal and the wheels. You know, in the auto industry, we have something called break by wire. We have steer by wire. That’s when your mechanical inputs don’t actually have mechanical connection to the outputs. It’s when everything is handled by, you know, electronic impulses. So, the way it works is the motor down here where the pedal is senses the inputs that you give it by pedaling. It translates that to the upper motor which then drives the wheels. If they didn’t say that, I wouldn’t have known that there was no mechanical connection because it is really convincing when you’re pedaling. It is assisting and it just feels pretty natural. Yeah. Another really interesting thing about this motor is that it is actually a structural member of the bike. It is housed in this magnesium housing that is basically the same shape as this square and the rest of the bike kind of bolts onto that. So this motor serves a double purpose as both a motor and also a structural component of the bike. That is definitely some some Rivian like or some Teslaike thinking there. So I got to say I came into this a little bit skeptical. You know, does the ebike really need to be reinvented? What does a Riven or a Tesla approach to the ebike really do? How can an ebike be better or a lot better than it already is? And I got to say, I think also pretty much convinced me. And there were a couple of things that really drove that point home. Let me show you what I mean. They basically put what I would call a Rivian grade or a Tesla grade infotainment system into this eBike, which I have never seen before. You get this really nice looking circular screen. You rotate to ride, as you can see. You rotate this whole housing, and that’s how you unlock the bike. And then you have just this really delightful user interface that kind of reminds me of Rivian. just looks really charming and really well thought out. It also works really well as you can see. I’m going to swipe here. Just super smooth swiping. You don’t get that in a lot of cars, much less ebikes. Um, so let me take you through some of the screens here. You have this main screen, which is going to show things like your speed, your range, your battery percentage. One one thing that really impressed me is see up there you have 82% battery. Most ebikes are not going to tell you the exact percentage of battery that you have left. It’ll be like four bars that go from green to red. On this you have the the real number 82%. You can just tap it and then it shows you what that means in miles. That bar over there on the right is your power meter. So, it’s going to show how much power you’re using and how much you’re regenerating. One, that brings me to another really cool point. This bike has regenerative braking just like an electric car, which is really, really cool. So, when you pull the brake lever about halfway, that’s going to be regen. And then if you pull it even more than that, you’re going to get your actual friction brakes. In this screen, you can also choose your drive mode. Click there. You got allpurpose, you got sport. And that’s how you change drive modes. You also have a manual mode that I’ll get into in a sec. But everything just has these great little drawings and graphics. I’m really impressed with this software. Scrolling over, you have a trip screen so you can see how much power you’re using, how many miles you’ve gone, that kind of thing. You have a compass or if you pair your phone, that’s right, you can pair your phone to this. This will be a navigation screen. So you can get turnbyturn navigation right here in this display. And there’s a media player screen. So same deal if you pair your phone, you can actually just pause and play your favorite podcast or whatever as you’re going to work. Also developed all this software in house. They also designed all the chips that go throughout this ebike. And so that means that kind of just like a Rivian R1T or an R1S, this has a zonal architecture, just a smaller shrunken down version that doesn’t do quite as much stuff. But nonetheless, they have control over the entire bike, over all the electronics of the bike, which means that this bike gets over-the-air software updates, which is really, really cool. So that infotainment system and the software and the overtheair updates and just the way that whole system looks is one of the things that really impressed me about the also ebike. There was another moment though in my tour of this bike that really blew me away. Let me show you that. So let me bring your attention to this part right over here that’s holding the seat. See how there’s a seam right over here? So, this component can actually be swapped out and you can swap in a bunch of different versions of it. You can have a cargo version that has a big rack on the back over here. You can put seats on your bike. You can have a taller one if you’re a tall person or a shorter one if you’re a short person. And also says that there’s going to be a bunch of other options coming down the road. All right, so let me show you how one of the very coolest features on the also ebike actually works. We’re going to turn this regular commuter ebike into a cargo bike in just a few seconds. So, first thing you do, go to the screen over here and you click swap seats. It just electronically unlocked. And I just pick this thing up. It’s actually pretty light. Put it wherever I want to put it. Set it aside. And then this one should just drop right in. Recognize it. And it should just lock in. We’ll be ready to go. [Music] Boom. There you go. Now you have a cargo bike that is super duper sturdy in just what, 5 seconds. Pretty cool. One of the really cool things about this also is, as you can see, it’s got pins in the bottom. So, this actually electronically connects to the rest of the bike. That’s how you get your brake light and your turn signal back there. It also means that each one of these things can be paired to a specific rider. So, if you have one, you have the cargo bike one, and you have your preferences set, when you put that in, the bike will know that it’s you who wants to ride. Same thing goes with the other one. And if it’s your wives or your partners or your boyfriends, you just put in yours and it knows what their settings are, which is really, really clever stuff from Also. The more that you look around this bike, the more there are just clever features everywhere. It’s clear that they really thought through everything about this bike. Here’s another really cool feature. Um, and this also felt very Rivian to me. This is the battery from the also eBike. You can take it out and you can charge it on your desk or in your house, wherever. But you can also just use it as a portable battery bank, which is a really, really cool feature. It’s kind of exactly like vehicle to home or vehicle to everything features that we see on electric vehicles where you can plug different appliances. You can plug your house into your car. So, you can totally imagine people, you know, they’re going to the beach, they’re going on an adventure, as this bike over here suggests, and they want to plug in their phone, they want to plug in some other stuff, and boom. I mean, you have a pretty large battery pack at your disposal. Another cool part of this is that this is actually full of Rivian R1 cells. The same exact battery cells that you get in a Rivian R1S or R1T are just stacked up inside of there. And here’s one other really cool thing. See that there is an e- in display on the side of the battery pack that refreshes every now and then and tells you what state of charge your battery is at. Okay, so we’ve talked a lot about what makes the also ebike cool. I think that’s pretty clear. One thing we haven’t talked about is what it’s actually like to ride. And I’ve got good news for you there. I was super impressed with this when I rode it for about an hour the other day. So, first of all, it’s just really, really quick. The also ebike will go up to 28 mph, making it a class 3 ebike. It’ll hit that when you’re pedaling via pedal assist. It’ll only go 20 via the throttle. But overall, it’s just a really quick and really quick accelerating ebike. Also says that this motor they developed has more torque than any other ebike motor on the market. And you definitely feel that I went 28 miles an hour up a hill and I basically felt like it was totally fine. I I did not break a sweat at all and that was really impressive. Another interesting thing is there isn’t really a gearbox. So if you’re an ebike nerd, you might understand what I’m about to say, which is that this pretty much functions like an ebike with a torque sensor and a continually variable transmission. What that basically means in practice to people who don’t understand that is that you just basically hop on set the pedal assist level that feels right to you and you just ride and the bike kind of takes care of the rest. It makes it really easy. The pedal assist multiplies the effort you put in and then the motors just basically figure out kind of what sort of gearing works for that particular moment. So if you’re going up a hill, it’ll make it a little easier. If you’re going on a flat, it’ll make it a little harder. And it all works really, really well. and super smoothly. For people who don’t want that continually variable transmission, who want a little bit more control over the gear that they’re in, there actually is an option for that. So, you can set it to manual mode. You can set it to trail mode within that. And then, instead of setting the pedal assist settings, that little lever on the right side actually lets you shift through gears. The thing is, there are no gears in this bike. It’s all pretend. It’s all mimicking gears, but it actually is really convincing. Another thing I’ll call out is the brakes. Because if you have a 28 mph ebike that gets to 28 mph really darn fast, you’re going to want a good set of brakes. And I’m happy to report that this definitely stops very well. It has these huge hydraulic disc brakes. It also has that regenerative braking that I talked about. And overall, it just you don’t have to worry about stopping when you’re going at 28 mph on this thing. I should also mention that dual suspension. Totally soaks up bumps, no problem. I think a lot of people have had that experience where you’re on one of those rented city bikes. It’s big and heavy and clunky and you’re hitting every pothole and you can feel it up your spine and it’s loud. And this is not at all like that. This totally floats over bumps. Super comfortable. So, how far can you go on the also ebike? They’re going to have two different battery packs, a standard one and a large pack. And in the bigger one also says you’ll be able to do anywhere from 25 m to 100 miles on a full charge depending on which pedal assist level you’re at. So, the biggest question that you have, the biggest question I had going into this, the biggest question I had, especially after I spent some time actually riding and being around the also, because frankly, and I’ll be perfectly honest here, I might buy one of these things, is how much does it cost, right? Ebikes can be really, really expensive. And there’s a big difference between if also reinvented the ebike and it costs 10 or 12,000 versus making a really cool ebike that costs two or three grand. and I it’s somewhere in between, but I was pleasantly surprised by how little this bike actually costs. So, the launch edition also will cost around $4,500 when it goes on sale next year. It is pretty much the same as the performance model over here, except that the launch edition, instead of these kinds of gray covers on the motor, it has more fun purple ones. So, that begs the question, how much is the base model? The base model, they say, is under $4,000, which, yeah, none of this is that cheap, but also, if you look around at the other ebikes out there, it’s not that expensive either, especially when you consider the power, the features, the software, all the stuff that you get that you really can’t get in another ebike. So, at the outset, I told you that ebikes are not the only thing that also is working on that. I’ll show you what else also is building. And this stuff is so top secret that they have it behind this sheet over here. Let me show you what I’m talking about. Here it is. This is one of the next also vehicles. It is, as you can see, a four-w wheeled delivery van style ebike. So, you sit in there just like a bike. You can pedal and you can also carry a bunch of packages. So, you can think of this almost like a minisized version of the Rivian van that it sells to Amazon and some other uh delivery partners. So, the benefit of this kind of thing seems pretty clear to me. You’ve probably seen this sort of vehicle maybe in the bike lanes of New York. And it means basically you can deliver packages without getting stuck in traffic. It’s also cheaper to run than a big, let’s say, UPS van. Um, so this thing is pretty cool. So you’re probably thinking, why do the delivery drivers get to have all the fun? Why can’t I have a four-w wheeled also ebike to go do my errands and go to the grocery store and stuff? Well, you can. Also is also working on a four-wheeler for consumers. Here it is. But this thing is really, really cool looking. I got to say, I love the ebike. I’m a little bit less convinced on this thing. but also says that there’s a market for it. They say that basically this can take the place of a golf cart in places where people use golf carts to get around. There are a lot of neighborhoods like that. You know, maybe it takes the place of a really huge ebike for a family that’s trying to get two or three kids to school. You’ve got this big bin in the back where you could put a couple of kids, maybe like I don’t know, one or two adults or a whole bunch of Trader Joe’s bags. And there you go. Maybe this will be interesting to some people. We’ll have to see. So, as we wrap up, I wanted to give some final thoughts on Also and on its first ebike. Overall, I think, as you can tell, I am super impressed. I think from the way that this bike rides to the technology in it to the software to the way it looks, this is a really, really impressive bike. And I think a lot of people are going to like it, especially at that price of $4,000 to $4,500, which by the way also says it was able to get the price that low because it’s so vertically integrated because it doesn’t need to buy motors and controllers and circuit boards from other companies. It designs all that stuff inhouse. But you can’t deny that this is a risky business. There are tons of other ebike startups that have had really major problems or even gone bankrupt. Look at companies like Cowboy, Van Moof, Rad Powerbikes, Cake. Those are just some of the ebike startups that have had real troubles in the last couple of years. I do think though, given the bike that I saw today, that also’s got a very good chance of pulling this off. All right, that’s the video. Thanks so much for watching. Make sure to like this video, subscribe to the Inside EVs YouTube channel, and let us know in the comments what do you think of the also eBike. Would you buy one? See you in the next one. [Music]
Also unveiled a $4,500 electric bike that it says is packed with Rivian “magic.” We got an early look.
Far too much of the conversation around where mobility is going next centers around electric cars. If you really want to slash pollution and create the safer, less congested cities of the future, arguably, the smaller, cheaper electric bike is a much better bet. After all, a battery-powered car is still a car.
E-bike sales are already taking off globally. But a new startup called ALSO, born within Rivian, hopes to take the space the next level. The idea: Take the clean-sheet, ground-up, tech-driven approach Tesla and Rivian applied to cars, and do the same thing for smaller electric vehicles.
“In spite of the level of friction and the pain points necessary to say yes to the mode today, the adoption is that high,” Chris Yu, Also’s president, told me. “So we thought, hey, if we just created some of this Rivian magic within the category, we could really inspire widespread adoption.”
Also came out of stealth this year, touting some outside funding and a vague vision to revolutionize not-cars. Now, after taking its debut e-bike for a spin and sitting down with its leadership, we know a lot more about what that “magic” looks like. And I’ve got to say, I’m extremely impressed.
In more ways than I could’ve imagined, the TM-B brings the seamless, satisfying experience that Rivian and Tesla drivers know and love to a two-wheeler that costs about a tenth as much. It boasts a bevy of ingenious features and a charming infotainment system that puts some cars to shame, plus the ability to download over-the-air upgrades over time.
On top of all that, it’s a joy to ride and still costs less than some competitors. Oh, and e-bikes aren’t all that Also is cooking up: The company envisions a whole micromobility ecosystem—and that includes quads.
Read more on our site here:
How Rivian’s Also Is Reinventing The Electric Bike
https://insideevs.com/news/776646/rivian-also-electric-bike-tm-b/
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00:00 – Introduction
01:00 – ALSO Company Background
02:24 – ALSO TM-B Design & Features
04:22 – ALSO TM-B Drive Unit
06:36 – ALSO TM-B Software & Infotainment
09:55 – ALSO TM-B Seat Changing
12:12 – ALSO TM-B Removable Battery
12:36 – ALSO TM-B Riding Impressions
15:39 – ALSO TM-B Brakes
16:00 – ALSO TM-B Suspension
16:29 – ALSO TM-B Range
16:50 – ALSO TM-B Price
18:11 – ALSO Amazon Delivery Bike
19:19 – ALSO Personal Utility Bike
20:40 – Will ALSO Succeed?
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