Mechanic, stuntman, musician – and the mastermind behind TQ drive systems.
Toni Rossberger talks the way he thinks. Broad, Bavarian-inflected, with detours and laughter in between. Someone who drifts off – and perhaps precisely because of that ends up in places others never reach. Musician. Motorcycle stuntman. World‑class drive tinkerer. Wild in the best sense of the word: not reckless, but mentally free. Anyone who considers that just a label might want to take a look at his jump from the ski-jumping hill in Garmisch-Partenkirchen on German television back in 1999.
I wasn’t really into school. I preferred building stuff. I needed something I could actually get my hands on.
Note on the quotes: In the original German version, Toni Rossberger speaks in a Bavarian dialect. In Germany, this dialect is widely perceived as authentic, warm, and disarmingly honest. Because dialects don’t translate directly, we invite you to imagine that the following direct quotes are spoken by Arnold Schwarzenegger in English – blunt, confident, and unmistakably grounded.
Toni has no academic background. No degree, no title, no straight résumé. A basic school certificate. A self taught mechanic. And today, Head of Advanced Development at TQ – a high‑tech company specializing in aerospace technology, medical robotics, and highly integrated drive systems. Sounds like a contradiction. It isn’t.
Alongside Toni, a dedicated team of bike nerds is driving TQ’s drive development – including Daniel Theil, Product Manager TQ E-Mobility (center).
Simon Hoffmann (center), Head of TQ E-Mobility.
Learning by Taking Things Apart, Not by Reading About Them
Engines were never an abstract concept to Toni. They were toys, learning tools, and tests of limits. As a teenager, he took apart anything that could be taken apart – not to reassemble it, but to understand where its limits lay. Motorsport wasn’t so much about competition for him, but about experimentation. If something held up, it was good. If it failed, you knew exactly where to improve it.
He now calls this his personal mechanical engineering degree. Learning by doing, not by reading. Old photos from that time bear witness: bicycles fitted with self‑built engines, created by a teenager who wanted to see what would happen if you simply tried. Not electric motors, but combustion engines. Loud. Raw. Completely inefficient. But driven by the same urge to push boundaries – long before anyone spoke of light assist.
As the youngest participant in the Penzberg carnival parade, the 13-year-old Toni presents his own “float”: a motorized Bonanza bike – still powered by a combustion engine, of course.
At just eleven, Toni converted a tricycle into a go-kart. Taking apart an engine: check. Putting on sandals properly: still a challenge.
This BMX was said to reach 100 km/h. But by then, Toni was already fourteen.
Perhaps it’s precisely this way of learning that explains why Toni’s drives at TQ don’t feel like engineering meant for display, but like tools built to withstand pressure. And it also shapes the way he deals with them: even when something is genuinely remarkable, Toni doesn’t make a fuss about it.
That was my personal mechanical engineering degree.
Only when prompted by a colleague does he begin to talk about a detail normally confined to textbooks. He speaks about the Harmonic Pin Ring gearbox used by TQ – a coaxially arranged, double eccentric, cycloidal gearbox – and about a limit long considered fixed in the literature. Around 70 percent efficiency, he says, was thought to be the ceiling for this type of gearbox.
Toni laughs briefly, almost apologetically, and then explains where TQ focused its efforts. Not on the basic architecture itself – the coaxial arrangement remains what it is – but on the details: gear profiles, bearings, manufacturing tolerances, surface finishes. Details that theory often lumps together as friction losses, but which in practice determine whether a system works or fails. This is how TQ achieves gearbox efficiencies of well over 90 percent – far beyond what was long considered feasible for this type of gearbox.
He explains this without pathos, almost casually. As if someone had to remind him that this is no longer a backyard workshop, but world‑class technology.
A Company That Grows Around Its Tasks
Toni has been connected to TQ since the mid‑1990s. Back then, it wasn’t really a company yet, but a small mechanical workshop. A handful of people. Jobs that were often too big. Founder Detlef Schneider looked for challenging projects and built the company around them. If something couldn’t be done, a tool was built to make it possible. That was Toni’s domain.
Toolmaking and mechanics were followed by aerospace, medical technology, robotics – always fields where limits had to be explored. Drive technology was Toni’s constant passion. Making motors smaller, more compact, more power‑dense without them flying apart. Anyone with a motorsport background thinks this way.
This mindset didn’t remain theoretical. It waited for the moment when it could latch onto something larger than tooling and special machinery.
An Idea Too Loud to Ignore
In the late 2000s, Toni came across Clean Mobile almost by accident – a small startup with a wild idea: an electrically driven two‑wheeler with pedals. Heavy. Loud. Technically crude. But with a core that wouldn’t let him go. Chains. Coaxial gearboxes. Efficiency over elegance. The first models emerged. Deafening monsters, as Toni admits with a grin.
That thing was as loud as a chain saw – but it worked.
What began as an after‑hours experiment alongside his work at TQ gradually became serious. Toni went to Detlef Schneider not to pitch an idea, but out of loyalty. He realized that his ideas and TQ could no longer be separated cleanly. The technology had a future – but for him it also had to fit TQ. And he needed a way to reconcile both.
Trust Instead of Control
What happened next is remarkable. No claims of ownership. No urge to control. Trust. Clean Mobile became a customer of TQ, and later part of the company. Toni remained Toni – not classically employed, but embedded. From 2011 onward, early prototypes ran in internal tests, including an Audi bike and later projects such as M1. Technically exciting, but still far from a real market.
TQ isn’t just a company. It’s family.
Even today, there’s a quiet sense of astonishment and gratitude in the way Toni speaks about his path at TQ. Not as a grand gesture, but as an undertone. As he talks, a line of song lyrics keeps slipping in between: Only the wild ones give you something and never want it back.
That’s roughly how this unspoken agreement must have felt. Someone lets another person work, without immediately demanding something in return. And that kind of trust has consequences. In the years that followed, further steps into the bicycle world emerged – with Haibike marking the first larger project. It drew attention, without immediately breaking through the market or shortening the long development cycles.
The Switch: Trek
Although Haibike’s first models were already in planning at the time, they were still under embargo. There was no usable showcase to the outside world. The idea was clear: a production bike was needed on which the system could be demonstrated – quietly, without making it official.
After independent research, the choice fell on a Trek Powerfly. The first bike was borrowed, not to ride it, but to measure it. Geometry checked. Installation space analyzed. Load paths examined. The bike was returned the same day. When the dealer pressed the power button, the battery still showed 99 percent. Shortly before, he had been assured that they’d had a really good time riding it.
Only later did TQ buy its own Trek bikes and convert them independently. Prototypes circulated, feedback was gathered. Before a major bike show, the next step followed: direct contact with Trek. A developer came by, immediately understood what he was seeing, and was impressed – but had no authority to decide. As a result of that meeting, the modified bike made its way to the United States.
The long-standing dialogue with Trek paid off. The Trek Slash+ 2025 equipped with the HPR50 was well received within the e-mountainbike community.
What was convincing there above all was the ride feel. The feedback was clear: the technology was exciting, the power density impressive – but the motor was still bulky and difficult to sell. The question wasn’t whether the system worked, but whether it could be scaled. Quieter. Smaller. Toward two kilograms. An assignment without a contract. But with direction.
Why Everything at TQ Comes from One Source
The breakthrough didn’t come with a bang, but through persistence. With the HPR50, TQ first became visible as a system supplier. Motor, gearbox, electronics, battery – all from one source. Around 80 percent of the drive components are manufactured in‑house at TQ today.
A key counterpart in this was Heinz, Toni’s counterpart in electronics. Mechanics versus circuit boards. Gut feeling versus algorithms. They don’t work according to organisational charts, but in constant dialogue. Bets on how small things can be made. Teasing over who was too optimistic this time. Circuit boards that burned out. Evenings spent over beers, already thinking through the next iteration. Encouraging and challenging go hand in hand. Stagnation is seen as a greater risk than failure.
It’s worse when nothing burns out. Then you didn’t push hard enough.
Built Against the Noise
With the HPR60 and HPR40, TQ continues down this path. Quieter. Smaller. More efficient. Gravel. Road. Light assist. Segments that don’t shout. While parts of the bike industry get lost in the noise of full‑power systems, TQ takes a different route.
A tour through the production facilities makes this tangible. The assembly lines resemble medical technology more than bicycle manufacturing. Around 80 percent of the drive components are produced in‑house – an exceptionally high figure compared to other manufacturers.
This mindset continues into quality assurance. Every motor is technically tested. At the end of each shift, two randomly selected drives from ongoing production are additionally mounted on separate test benches. In parallel, an internal team of around ten riders continuously tests new setups, software versions, and hardware iterations. Feedback flows directly back into development – not as a marketing argument, but as a working foundation.
No End in Sight
Today, TQ is still not a giant in the e‑mountainbike drive segment. Over the years, however, a small but discerning market has emerged – driven less by curiosity than by conviction. Systems like those from TQ tend to find their way to riders who long viewed electrification with skepticism. This is not a promise of maximum power, but an offer to those who value a natural, quiet ride feel and consistency.
Anyone leaving the factory takes away fewer product promises than a sense of exactly that consistency. Of a way of working that allows freedom, but no sloppiness. Of a place where freedom is never an end in itself, but always tied to responsibility. Like Toni, TQ as a whole seems content to swim against the current.
When you’re passionate about it, there’s no end.
Perhaps that’s part of what defines TQ. Not a recipe. More a direction and an attitude. Things don’t emerge here simply because they are needed immediately, but because someone is willing to give them time. Toni prefers talking about new submarine projects rather than market share – about ideas he wants to try out, without yet knowing where they will lead.
Words: Jonny Grapentin Photos: Benedikt Schmidt
About the Author
Jonny Grapentin
Jonny Grapentin is an editor at 41 Publishing for E-MOUNTAINBIKE and DOWNTOWN. His background as a publisher in digital education explains his didactically grounded approach. He is responsible for "The MIRROR" column, focusing on development logic and the long-term relevance of products beyond launch cycles. His expertise lies in evaluating technological innovation and everyday utility, which he demonstrates in his numerous product tests. Whether it’s kids' bikes, pizza ovens, or espresso machines, he consistently tests innovations for real-world value, and critically questions market trends.
