CHRIS’S LAPIERRE EZESTY AM 9.0 £5,399

I remember, earlier in the year, writing that while Lapierre intend the eZesty to be a ‘best of both worlds’ bike – combining the versatility of an ‘analogue’ trail bike with motor assistance – I was concerned that it wasn’t as good as either. In some ways I still feel that’s true, and in some ways it isn’t. The biggest issue I’ve found with the bike is its 250Wh battery. At 19.5kg, the eZesty is a lot heavier than a regular trail bike, so unless

I was eating up the miles on flat bridleways and farm tracks, I still felt the need to put the FAZUA motor in its highest setting (250 per cent assistance) on climbs. This drained the battery quickly, even after a 24-hour charge. Take a recent ride with the team as an example – we started at around 10am and by 1pm my battery had run out, halfway up a hill. Ever tried grinding a 19.5kg bike up a long climb using only leg power? I can’t say I recommend it.

What I can recommend is just about everything else. The spec is excellent and I didn’t swap anything out all year. I did add a frame strap so I could carry some spares, however, and had to buy a side-loading cage and lower-volume bottle because of the limited space above the fat down tube. If you remove the ‘drivepack’ (the motor and battery unit), the eZesty is a perfectly serviceable carbon fibre trail bike. I rode it like this quite a lot over summer, so I can get on board with Lapierre’s intentions in this area. It’s an experiment that’s successful enough to open up some interesting discourse about where bikes could be heading. But, would I buy one? As much as I’ve enjoyed my time on the eZesty, I think I’d rather spend such a large pile of cash on a more powerful conventional e-bike. Or even splash out on a superspecial non-e-machine, because I don’t really feel like being able to do both reasonably well solves enough problems to justify the compromises it requires. www.lapierrebikes.com