Canadian freeride icon and MC extraodinaire Brett Tippie finally has a new sponsor. After his previous bike backer YT collapsed spectacularly last year (and then rose from the ashes?), Tippie was left without an official frame sponsor. No longer! The Canadian has connected with L.A.’s Aventon bikes.
Tippie made the announcement from Arizona, but didn’t show off what exact bike he’s riding just yet. Which has our interest piqued.
Aventon is now known mostly for electric commuters and cargo bikes. The Californian brand is new to eMTB, just launching the Ramblas ADV. But we think there’s more. The Ramblas ADC is an eMTB, for sure. But if that’s all they’ve got, it’d be the first time in a long time that we’ve seen Tippie on a hardtail. If that’s the extent of , just tip-toeing into the world of mountain bikes, I’m sure the German brand would have chosen someone a little more inline with that image than the Canadian wild man. Or they really didn’t do their market research.
But looking over at the brand’s German website, all the sketches under the eMTB category are of full suspension bikes, so the brand’s pretty clearly up to something.
What is Aventon doing on trails?
If Aventon is wading deeper into electric mountain biking, it would be an interesting twist to an already crowded field. For two reasons.
First, Aventon has made its name on value. That Ramblas ADV? It’s just $4,100, and build with real components. Budget components, to be sure. But legit components from brands like Maxxis and RockShox.
Second, Aventon makes its own motors. The Ramblas ADV comes with its “mid power” A100 motor. It has 750W peak power and a max torque of 100 Nm. That’s definitely the high end of “Mid,” and you can unlock it to a more powerful Class 3 e-bike (where that’s legal…). Does the market need more motor options? Well, the last new motor to launch shook the eMTB market to its core, so the playing field is far from settled. The the very least, it’ll be interesting to see where the A100 motor fits in.
Wait, Aventon? Didn’t they make…
If the Aventon names sounds familiar from somewhere other than e-bikes you … well, you probably rode fixies when you were younger. The California brand started out making affordable alloy track bikes focused squarely on street racing. It grew to sponsor Red Hook Crit-winning teams before abruptly switching gears to focus on developing electric bikes around 2018. These e-bikes started out squarely in the commuter space, but it looks like Aventon’s expanding off road. How far? Well, that remains to be seen. But as we mentioned, you don’t sign Tippie if you want to sell an e-gravel bike.