Reign Down or Up Mountains With This E-bike From World Leader Giant Bicycles

Even if you aren’t a biker, you can tell right from the start that the Giant Reign E+ 0 Pro is made for some heavy-duty riding. If you didn’t catch the “E” bit, it stands for electric. But frankly, how does an e-bike handle mountains? You might be as surprised as I was.

For starters, her frame heeds some attention. Constructed from Aluxx SL-grade aluminum offers the proper weight and strength to tackle six-foot drops quite easily. At least it looks that way in the video below.

A huge Maestro 160mm suspension keeps the rear swing arm ready to settle you down gently no matter what you land on. That arm is composed from the same aluminum standard as the rest of the frame, so to question is capabilities, would mean you question the rest of this 8,500-dollar bike.

But an aluminum frame is enough for what some crazy folks have in mind. To make sure this bike lives up to the Giant name, and does it safely, the use of a Fox Float X2 Factory shock with a 205x62.5mm Trunnion mount, custom tuned for Giant, keeps everything in line.

If we’re still on the subject of suspension, on the front of this beauty is set another product from the Fox line. A 36 Float Factory 27.5-inch fork with 170mm of travel and Grip2 damper, especially designed for e-bike. But why would an e-bike need a whole line of suspension? Because they’re usually heavier than most other bikes, due to a battery pack and motor.

Speaking of motors, we have the pleasure of being thrown off cliffs by a Giant SyncDrive Pro with 80nm of torque, all powered by Yamaha. The beauty of this motor is that offers 360% assist. But as with most e-bike anything really, the E+ 0 Pro also has a pedal-assist cap at 20 mph (32 kph).

To power it all, Giant used their own in-house design. The EnergyPak Smart 500 is a 36V 13.8Ah integrated lithium ion battery. If you try to find out how long you can ride for with something like this, don’t. Because mountain biking is so dynamic, and battery use fluctuates at very erratic levels, gauging a particular ride-time is quite difficult. But all that aside, if you do happen to burn your batteries, on a 6A charger, she’ll be up to 80% in just 2.2 hours.

It seems that for the rest of the components such as brakes, levers, cassette, and rear derailleur, Shimano is missing. To take its place is Shimano’s evil cousin, Sram. However, the front derailleur is offered by MRP with a V3 co-molded TR chain guide.

Factory setting include Maxxis 3C MaxxTerra tires on both front and back, with slight variations as pressures are exerted differently on each one, but if you don’t like them, just throw something else on for 100 bucks each.

Maybe you’re having doubts about what the heck is an e-bike doing up on some mountains, but we assure you the boys at Giant know what they are doing and wouldn’t be offering anything less than the best in adrenaline and safety.