THE MOTOR

While a new name to the e-bike motor market, Polini is a large company that made its name in Italy’s domestic market for high-performance scooter products. In short, they know how to make two wheels go fast.

This is one of our first rides on an Italian-made Polini mid-drive motor. It is seriously impressive. It’s lightweight at 6.72 pounds, puts out 250W (500-watt peak) and 70 N/m of torque. That may not be the same torque as a Bosch CX, but it’s almost a pound lighter. It also offers a narrow Q-factor.

“We tried it on a stretch of protected bike path with great visibility and a few hills, and the word ‘thrilling’ isn’t enough to describe it.” 

The battery has a 500-Wh capacity and is designed to be semi-integrated into the frame. It does protrude from the top of the downtube slightly, and there are bottle cage bosses mounted to it so you can easily put a water bottle on it.

The display is made by Marquardt, and it’s one of our favorites. It’s an all-in-one design, incorporating the screen and keypad into one unit. There are buttons for increasing and decreasing the power mode, a light switch (more on that later), an on/off switch and a toggle switch to change the information on the screen. You can toggle between the normal screen, one that shows how many watts your own legs are putting out and how much power the motor is using right now. 

The whole system is elegantly designed, fairly discreet and, as we discovered, surprisingly powerful. It has five different assistance modes, and all that are monitored using torque, cadence and speed sensors. It’s set up as a Class 1 bike, so the motor will cut off at 20 mph. But, there’s also a way to turn it into essentially a Class 3 bike.

WHO IT’S MADE FOR

Owing to the tire selection, our Energy SUV was set up as a gravel-friendly bike, but it’s just as capable as a daily-use road/commuter bike. The light weight makes it easy to carry around—if you have to take it into your office. And, you’ll get to your office without sweating, if you want. For the ride home, leave the system off (there’s virtually no drag from the motor when off) and let the extra weight make you sweat as much as you want.

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