I apologize in advance, but most of the readers of this article The Verge You can’t go wrong buying a modern electric bike from Amsterdam-based Beloretti. But if you live in Holland, Belgium or Germany and can spend €3,299… well, congratulations. Because you can buy him one of the best electric bikes available, his favorite bike of the year so far. .
I recently reviewed the top-of-the-range (€3,498) VanMoof S5. I longed for a removable battery, a simple belt drive and smoother automatic shifts. That’s exactly what you get with Beloretti’s new Ace Two and step-through Ivy Two e-bikes. “Two” stands for second generation status.
The new Veloretti is equipped with Bafang’s 250W mid-drive motor and 540Wh battery, Gates’ robust carbon CDX belt drive, Shimano’s MT200 hydraulic disc brakes, Osram front light and a comfortable Selle Royal saddle. In other words, Veloretti, which was acquired by shipping giant Pong Holdings late last year, uses off-the-shelf parts that most bike shops can replace or repair. This is important. Because riding your high-tech commuter e-bike in the sun, rain, and snow every day is guaranteed to end up in trouble.
So if you’re a fan of luxury e-bikes built with Dutch know-how but are skeptical of VanMoof’s history of specialized parts and service issues, Cross’s new 2nd generation Ivy and Ace e-bikes You will love your bike. Rival in town, Veroretti.
The Enviolo AutomatiQ shifters and Enviolo City hubs mounted on my Ace Two review bike are something everyone should experience at least once. It is a very civilized way of riding a bicycle.
Enviolo (a company also headquartered in Amsterdam) builds an automatic shifter around an internal shifting (ratio range of 0.55 to 1.7 / 310 percent) rear hub. So it can be used with belt drive instead of oil chain. Cassettes and derailleurs full of toothy sprockets all require regular maintenance. With the Enviolo AutomatiQ, you simply choose your pedaling speed and all shifts happen automatically without changing your cadence. They are also “stepless”, meaning that the gear ratio does not change under heavy loads, but electromechanical noise is often heard. Rumbling It sits on top of a nearly silent Bafang motor mounted between the pedals.
I tested the Veloretti Ace Two e-bike for almost a month and had only two very minor complaints about the overall ride quality. Although rare, the powertrain can feel a bit erratic at very low speeds. It features a slight unevenness in pedal assist. And a few times after climbing over bumps of some size, it felt like the motor stopped at about his quarter turn of the pedal. However, I cannot reproduce this no matter how hard I try. Most of the time, the ride is effortless and completely intuitive.
In general, the Ace Two provided pedal assistance with excellent torque (65Nm) up to an acceptable 27km/h (17mph), although slightly above the EU limit of 25km/h (16mph) .
With a full battery, I managed to drive 51km (32 miles) in maximum power mode. The app said the battery was almost empty with 4km (2.5 miles) remaining and it showed 7 percent. The problem is that Veloretti starts throttling power to about 20% to preserve battery life and warn you when it’s time to recharge. The app also has a toggle feature that automatically alerts you when the battery is low, which is what all e-bikes should do. At 7%, I had very little assist, so I decided to take the plunge and plug it in. Its 55km (34 miles) total range is just short of Belloletti’s lower bound estimate of 60km (37 miles).
The user experience is built around four buttons (two next to the left grip and two next to the right grip) on either side of the 2.5-inch color display. From left to right, next to the on/off/next buttons is the horn, then minus and plus buttons for scrolling through pedal assist levels and preferred bike cadences (more on that later).
Press and hold the plus key to display a safety tracking countdown alerting your emergency contract (defined in the app) to your current location. The alert will come as a text message with a link to a website showing geolocation information taken from the paired phone. This is useful in the event of an accident or if you feel unsafe. Tracking will automatically stop after 1 hour for him to ensure individual privacy.
Both the Ace and Ivy feature integrated front and rear constant-on running lights. Pressing and holding the minus button near the right grip toggles the brighter Osram front lights to better illuminate the area ahead at night. The rear light also works as an LED brake indicator.
I’m not a fan of the built-in display on the new Veloretti, but that’s simply because I don’t think most people who commute regularly by bike will need an integrated display. Additional costs and the possibility of another failure. It’s much easier to attach your phone to your bike with any number of inexpensive mounts and launch your favorite maps app whenever you need navigation. The new Ace and Ivy displays pack a lot of the information you need. 4 pages to see all.
The first page is a dense overview menu for stats geeks. Page 2 displays 5 pedal assist power levels (from zero to ‘superhero’), speed and remaining range. The third page shows turn-by-turn navigation initiated in the app. The fourth page shows your current cadence setting. The current battery charge and pedal assist power are displayed on all four pages.
To turn on your e-bike, press and hold the second handlebar button from the left. No app required. It will boot up in about 3 seconds and show the last used page on the display. Importantly, the bike also remembers all your previous settings for pedaling cadence and power assist, and you can change those settings too with a nicely designed app. So if you ride with the same settings every day, all you have to do is press the start button and hop on the bike. You can also step through each page on the display using the same button that powers up the e-bike.
1/11
The navigation and bike display built into the Veloretti app is based on the e-bike staple Mapbox. I tested it in Amsterdam and it was terrible. Directions are inaccurate or slow to update, and you miss turns. You can’t find a place that has been around for years in this area. Also, I don’t think the bridge near my house is bike-friendly (it is!). These are all issues that Google Maps and Apple Maps don’t have, which makes me want to mount my phone directly on top of that dedicated display. It’s a shame that Veloretti hasn’t integrated his Google Maps into their app like Cowboy does these days.
Pedaling cadence can only be changed with the handlebar plus or minus buttons when the cadence rpm menu is shown on the built-in display. Otherwise, the same button will increase or decrease the pedal assist force. Cadence can be set from 30 to 120 revolutions per minute. I set the pedals at 50 rpm on the flat Amsterdam, but up to 65 rpm to ease the strain on my quads when the dunes continue to be steep by the sea. In normal use we had very little need to adjust, but not if you live around steep hills where the 120rpm setting might be required.
To be honest, all four-button interfaces such as a four-page display seem a bit overkill, but in the end I mastered the UX. I wish the horn button was a little higher so that I could quickly locate it with my left thumb when I suddenly needed to warn tourists blindly encroaching on the bike path. . As is a common problem with other e-bikes, you’ll soon find out how waterproof these custom-made (and easily replaceable) buttons are. Also, I’m not a fan of e-bike displays in general, but as long as their electronics and cabling are robust enough to avoid causing expensive support issues down the road, they exist Alone is not necessarily a bad thing.
All my minor criticisms aside, Veloretti’s Ace Two is one of the best e-bikes I’ve ever ridden. as much as you want. Impressively, this is only the second generation of the company’s e-bikes. The company has been selling stylish city bikes since 2013, but he only started selling e-bikes in 2021. And now, with Pon Money backing the company, things only get better. Still, founder Ferry Sonder told me they want to strictly control their geographic distribution to ensure a high level of support.
“We’re not trying to conquer the world,” Sonder said. But if Mr. Veroletti continues to make e-bikes like the Ace Two and Ivy Two that prove to last as long as they were desirable when they first came out, the world may give him no choice. not.
All photography: Thomas Ricker/The Verge
