The anatomy of an arms race
The pursuit of ever bigger numbers is no coincidence. The global pedelec market is largely driven by Germany. Within this engineering culture, shaped in part by the way specialist media frames its coverage, quality is often defined by measurable parameters. If it’s printed in black and white on a test report, it’s taken as fact. This obsession with data sheets has shaped the different phases of optimisation we have seen over the past few years.
In the early days, high torque figures were primarily about comfort, helping riders tackle tarmac climbs at low cadences. Back then, the target group hardly included sporty trail riders. The aim was simple: cruise up the hill with ease or get from A to B without breaking a sweat.
The arrival of proper trail e-MTBs brought with it a peculiar new preoccupation: range anxiety. Particularly in off-road scenarios, riders started worrying about the battery running flat too soon, leaving them to pedal or even push a bike weighing well over 23 kg back home without assistance. As a result, batteries with more than 50 cells emerged, delivering capacities of 900 Wh and weighing upwards of 4.5 kg. More and more cells were crammed into the housings, driving up both size and weight.
Today, this segment is starting to stabilise. Huge batteries weighing over 4 kg are no longer widely accepted on modern performance bikes, as they noticeably affect the riding experience. The reason lies in cell technology. As energy density improves, fewer cells are needed while capacity stays the same or even increases.
While the battle for battery capacity was still raging, peak power quietly emerged as the next frontier of differentiation. Torque matters most when pulling away on steep terrain or for heavier riders, but power becomes the dominant factor as speed builds. On the bike, it largely determines how quickly the system hits the assistance cut-off and how much drive it still delivers at higher cadences.
Bosch set the benchmark with the Performance Line CX Gen 4 and its 600 W peak output. Yet even outliers like the TQ HPR120, pushing beyond 900 W, didn’t spark a broader debate about watt figures at the time. That may also be because, back then, such outputs were illegal in Austria. More on that in a moment.
The turning point came with the Shimano EP801 motor. While its predecessor, the EP800, was often perceived as less punchy with just 500 W peak power, Shimano raised the bar to 600 W with the EP801 and made a far bigger deal of it than ever before. Since then, peak power has been firmly established as a third key metric alongside Nm and Wh in marketing.
The starting gun for today’s wattage race was fired on 20 April 2023, when Austria aligned its motor vehicle legislation with EU standards and quietly removed the 600 W peak power limit from the legal text. Small in size but strategically significant as a market, the change effectively opened the floodgates for the extreme performance figures that followed. The arms race has now culminated in the DJI Avinox M2S, which delivers a staggering 1,500 W, two and a half times what was considered the absolute limit not long ago. But what does that actually mean for performance on the trail?
The reality on the trail
Physics quickly makes one thing clear: 150 Nm of torque pushes tire grip right to its limits, almost regardless of how aggressive the tread is or how soft the rubber compound may be. On loose terrain, it is the ground that limits how much power you can actually put down, not the motor. Even in dry conditions, this is a critical issue, as grip is often insufficient to convert full torque into real forward drive.
In wet conditions, the dynamic becomes far more pronounced. Slippery roots, mud or damp rocks mean that too much power will instantly break traction at the rear wheel. Instead of climbing in a controlled manner, the bike either digs itself in or slides sideways. At this point, sheer power becomes the enemy of traction. There are also challenges when it comes to geometry and weight distribution. Modern eMTBs are designed with descending performance in mind, and their tall front ends already have a tendency to lift on steep climbs, even without motor assistance. Factor in the additional drive from the motor, and that tendency is amplified considerably.
A direct comparison makes the issue plain: extracting the full potential of 1,500 W on steep climbs would require fundamental design changes on the order of those seen in hillclimb motorcycles. Chainstays several centimetres longer, not just a few millimetres. The findings from our real-world tests back this up.
Full power is primarily usable on steep fire roads. On technical, twisty trails, constant stops or the next tight corner usually prevent you from accessing that level of power in the first place. On top of that, drawing such high output drains the battery disproportionately quickly. Our lab test of the Avinox M2S shows that even with a 700 Wh battery, you run out of juice fast. Riding at full power for much more than an hour is hardly realistic.
In the end, the theoretical advantage is also put into perspective by the legal 25 km/h assistance limit. On less steep terrain, speeds are no higher than with less powerful systems. This becomes especially clear on motors with a power display. In many cases, around 350 watts of motor output is already enough to reach the cut-off speed. That is a figure also delivered by light-assist systems from brands such as TQ, Fazua and Bosch.
That said, the benefits are real when the system is properly calibrated. The first pedal stroke is often the most critical moment on a steep climb, and this is where torque proves its worth, helping to stabilise the bike or build speed more quickly and making balance easier to find. Software tuning is everything here. Power that arrives too abruptly costs control; power that builds too slowly denies the rider the momentum needed to get moving. A higher baseline speed also helps when rolling over trail obstacles on the climb. The slower you are travelling, the harder it is to stay balanced, and in that context additional power can serve as a genuine stabilising force.
Why the overall concept suffers under all that power
That kind of output comes at a price in terms of size and system weight. To sustain 1,500 W of peak power over any meaningful distance, you need batteries capable of sustaining that kind of output. That pushes up both the weight and the centre of gravity, creating clear compromises in the bike’s handling. At the same time, 150 Nm and 1,500 W place a disproportionately high mechanical load on the drivetrain. The chain, cassette, chainring and freehub are pushed to their limits on a permanent basis. That not only shortens service intervals dramatically, but also drives up running costs. To counter this, the components have to be built stronger and therefore heavier, which only adds even more weight to the overall system.
These design constraints also define what is possible in terms of integration, kinematics and weight distribution. Big motors and long batteries leave very little room to manoeuvre with frame designs. Inside the downtube, elongated battery packs often push the centre of gravity too high and too far forward. The result is more sluggish handling, and it becomes noticeably harder to lift the front wheel, as the leverage around the centre of gravity works against you. That playful character starts to fade.
Suspension performance can suffer too. Bulky motor housings make it harder to position pivots and bearings exactly where you want them, which has a direct impact on rear suspension kinematics and, in some cases, the overall look of the bike.
Visually, the gap between aesthetics and function continues to widen. While a slim down tube remains the goal, the motors on most full-power bikes look disproportionately large compared to the battery height, often appearing as if they have simply been bolted onto the frame. In an ideal world, the motor housing would sit flush with the height of the down tube, much like on an unassisted bike. There are also very real practical drawbacks. On smaller frame sizes in particular, extremely long batteries can cause issues with steering clearance, as the fork crown may collide with the down tube. Out on the trail, this is rarely a problem, but when transporting the bike in a car, it can quickly become a serious inconvenience.
Differentiation beyond headline figures
In our view, there is far more to distinguish one system from another than sheer power alone. The Avinox motor is certainly impressive in terms of its power-to-weight ratio, but in absolute terms it’s not actually any lighter than systems we have known for years. Shimano’s EP8, for example, was already launched in 2020 and sits in much the same weight class. For overall trail performance, a meaningful reduction in motor size would be of far greater value, as TQ have demonstrated with the HPR60. Smaller motors make it possible to use closed down tubes while still allowing the battery to be removed without the hassle of taking out the motor first.
They also allow the battery to sit lower in the frame, which brings the bike’s centre of gravity noticeably further down and more centrally within the chassis. That not only solves the visual issue of an ungainly bulge around the bottom bracket area, but also brings a clear improvement in handling. The design brings practical advantages beyond the trail too. Flying with the bike becomes straightforward, as the battery can be removed for transit and replaced with a hire unit at the destination. Removable batteries also simplify charging when a power supply is not conveniently located, whether in a hotel basement or at home with every socket occupied. As a further benefit, this approach saves around 1 kg over conventional designs that rely on a large down tube cut-out.
Noise is another meaningful quality marker. While descending silence has been a development priority for years, a truly quiet motor under load on the climb would represent a far greater real-world benefit for many riders than another 100 W of peak power.
There’s also still plenty of room for improvement when it comes to the software user experience. Fast, straightforward connectivity and the ability to tailor motor settings to your own needs should be standard by now. Software features in particular are where much of the industry is still lagging behind. Interactive mapping built straight into the top tube display, helping you actually discover new trails, is still largely absent. Most current displays feel like they belong to the era before Apple CarPlay in cars. They may be colourful and often well made, but they offer very little real added value. Just as drivers once fitted a TomTom to get where they were going, eMTB riders today still end up relying on a Garmin. A modern system needs to deliver that kind of information natively and intelligently.
Conclusions: putting the trend into perspective
Even so, the fundamental question remains: why do you need that much power if, in practice, you can only access it in short bursts before the battery gives up? Would it not make more sense to have slightly less, and use that to shrink the motor and battery or gain more range instead? We have seen this pattern before. The industry often has to push an idea to the extreme before finding its way back to a functional balance, just as we saw with 50-plus-cell batteries and, in a different way, with light eMTBs.
What we would like to see is a shift in focus toward what genuinely matters: more compact dimensions, lower weight, removable batteries on performance bikes and quieter motors. Equally important is the development of complete bike concepts that play to the specific strengths of individual motor systems, rather than pairing each one with the same geometry and the same parts mix by default. Orbea proved with the Rise that a distinct and compelling character requires neither the largest battery nor the most conventional high-end specification. True performance is not found on the data sheet. It is found on the trail.
Conclusion
The Avinox M2S and M2 drives are an impressive piece of engineering. What impressed us most is not the brute force of 150 Nm or 1,500 W, but how controllable that power remains at all times. There are far weaker motors on the market that make life much harder for the rider when starting on a steep climb simply because their power delivery is so abrupt. On top of that, the system can be fine-tuned extensively via software, bringing range back into a genuinely usable window.
Words: Reynaldo Ilagan Photos: Diverse
