Handcrafted Bikes Designer Tony Ellsworth Gives us the Radiant Carbon E-bike

This seems to be the case with one of the freshest designs around, the Radiant Carbon. It’s simply an e-bike. But using the word ‘simply’ to describe this particular e-bike wouldn’t be doing it justice. First off, it’s a design by legendary bike producer Tony Ellsworth for The Ride bike manufacturer. If you don’t know anything about this custom bike shop, get to it as you won’t be let down. But enough about the designer, we’re here to talk bike.

In classic bike talk fashion were going to start with the base, the frame. Giving this e-bike it’s appearance and holding all of its components together is an asymmetrical carbon fiber frame. What are asymmetrical frames? Well, have a look at that rear hardtail. What do you see?

At first, maybe not much, but you’ll quickly realize that the bottom of the rear triangle is missing, on the non-drive side.While on the drive side, the top bar of the triangle, or chainstay, is missing. It’s basically a lefty fork for your tail. Now, I'm not going to give my personal opinion on why I think this is a bad move, but it does look hella cool! All this aside, this sort of design does have some function.

One of these functions is light weighting. By removing extra parts of the design while still allowing function, something like this happens. But the second reason why some companies do this is to relieve stress from certain points along the frame. By removing extra parts such as this non-drive arm, when faced with pressure on the frame from let’s say a landing or a bump, that pressure is distributed differently along the rest of the frame. Depending on what components are removed and what the frame is built from, this can be a benefit, or a downside. So it is a bit tricky to say the least.

The fork is built in the same fashion. A Lefty fork is what we find, and we all know what those are all about. But it doesn’t seem to be made of carbon. The only material we know that is to be forged and swaged in it’s shaping is steel. This might be one of the reasons the bike comes in at 52 lbs. (23.5kg) with components and wheels.

Now we’ve gotten that it’s an e-bike, so we find a fully integrated 630Wh battery, which offers this beast a range of over 100 miles. However, we know nothing of a brand name for it, but with a fast charger, it’s up and running again in 3 hours.

Now as far as the motor goes, I was very surprised to hear the following name, Shimano. Thant’s right folks, they make motors too, apparently. A Shimano mid-drive motor that squeezes out 500W and a peak 60Nm of torque. Now it may not seem a lot in comparison to other newer maybe stronger e-bikes, but frankly, no more than that is needed for the kind of riding it’s designed for.

Another important aspect of the Radiant is its Gates Carbon drive system. Eliminating grease and throwing on a Carbon/Kevlar belt with a 50,000-mile (80,000km) life expectancy is something any city e-bike should include standard.

Top it all off with Magura MT-30 4-piston hydraulic brakes, and you really won’t have to worry about much. The rest of the ‘much’ you might think of is all taken care of by a Shimano Steps SC display. Make it all work with integrated wiring and you have yourself one good looking city slicker.

Now, this bike is barely in the production stage, and if you’ve got five-grand you can grab the Indiegogo special for less than $2,000 of what the bike will cost upon its official release. So, what are you looking to get for a late Christmas?