Greyp Bikes G6.2 2019
Reviews / Electric Bikes
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At A Glance
It’s not often you get to go to Croatia, but that was the location for the launch of Greyp’s new G6. Greyp is part of the famous car company Rimac, launched by Mate Rimac in 2006 they have a large operation in Croatia specialising in electric vehicles. From hydrofoil boats to supercars and everything in between Mate and the team at Rimac and Greyp have extensive knowledge of all things EV.
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To give you an idea of what they are capable of, every single component of the Rimac Concept One supercar and soon to be launched C Two hypercar is built and assembled on site in Croatia. We were treated to a tour of the factory by Mate himself, and it was impressive, to say the least. Greyp as a project has been around for a long time, Zvonimir Sučić was working on electric bikes before he met Mate and before Rimac was even founded. In fact, it was the coupling of these two engineers that formed the basis for the launch of the Croatian car industry, which is Rimac.
If you’ve not heard of them, have a quick google of Rimac Concept One and if you want to see a car crash chuck Richard Hammond in there too. The G12 was their concept “bike” a leviathan capable of 70kph, you read that right, with a throttle it never really made it onto the mountain bike scene as essentially it was just an electric motorbike.
The G6 changes all that though, it’s a street legal ebike for the European and Worldwide market that meets the limited at 25kph standard and no throttle requirements to ensure it is still classified as a bike. It comes in three versions, the 6.1, 6.2 and 6.3 as a homage to Rimac’s performance heritage the 6.3 comes with all the bells and whistles and is derestricted to 45kph, so if you want to get wild, that is the bike to go for.
Essentially, when you look at the Greyp G6, it is all about the technology, while most bikes just have a battery and an engine this beast has more processors than a Bitcoin mining facility and it even features a SIM card built in from T-Mobile. If you want your biking simple, this isn’t for you, if you want to be at the cutting edge of gamifying MTB, then the G6 will catch your eye and no doubt your wallet too.
One thing the team at Rimac and Greyp excel at is software, and they have developed a whole platform from the ground up. It is designed to let you compete with your friends on the trails as and even when you aren’t riding with buddies and fellow bikers around the world. We’ve seen an element of this gamification in the bike industry already with Strava, and love it or hate it you can’t deny the plethora of participants it has garnered over the years.
The Greyp G6 and its tech seeks to take that to another level, this is Strava on steroids, and it is built into the beating heart of the bike. Not only do you get a supercomputer and a SIM card, but there are also front and rear facing cameras that continuously record to the bikes hard drive. Hit a gnarly jump, get chased by a bear or have a massive crash, a few buttons on the App and you can have that footage uploaded to your favourite social media account almost instantly.
The build on the Greyp is impressive, the carbon frame is the same stuff the Rimac guys put into the supercar. They are no stranger to the black art, and the engineering and lines are quality. Throw on some decent components, their own proprietary battery (Rimac make battery’s for lots of the worlds electric cars including the new Aston Martin Valkyrie, Google it if you haven’t heard of it). The engine is from MRP, one of the lesser known brands out there but Greyp worked directly with them to get the balance of torque just right, and of course, you can fine tune this in the app too.
It’s that App that sets this bike apart. It does so much. Proof of this was the fact that the 70 test bikes all had brand new Samsung smartphones attached when we came to ride them. The bike does ride with its own screen perfectly well, but with the App engaged you get a whole lot more out of it. There is even a small HR monitor you can wear too. All of this tech then allows you to battle with friends for most calories burned, fastest speeds, most altitudes gained, etc. etc.
Perhaps the most impressive thing I saw though was the bikes ability to speak to your phone when you weren’t with it and its security functions. You can see a GPS track of the bike whenever you fancy, and if it moves without you authorising it, you can disable it. The team didn’t go into details on this feature but imagine being able to lock the cranks so you cannot pedal it off. E-bikes are heavy so the thief probably wouldn’t want to carry it too far!
Ridiculous tech aside, we were here to ride, and it was something I had been looking forward to after the launch. While this bike looks like a Raleigh Vektar that’s overdone it on the Kryptonite on paper, the proof is always as they say in the pudding...
As a bike journalist and someone who has ridden a multitude of bikes in my time, it is always hard to not look at the numbers first. Indeed if I am ever in the market to buy or ride a new bike as my own steed, I pour over the geometry like a monk looking at ancient texts hoping to reveal the secrets of the Holy Grail.
I’ll be honest, the numbers on this didn’t really add up, 150mm travel these days is firmly enduro bike and all mountain slayer territory. A very steep 67-degree head angle and a relatively short reach of 435mm on the large coupled with long 480mm chainstays 480mm are not the sort of numbers you will find on a modern enduro bike. The slack seat angle of 73 degrees and relatively short wheelbase will leave the keener eyed rider a little confused.
It’s as if they spent all the time on the tech and neglected the very basics of mountain bike design, geometry. Or they put 150mm of travel on a trail bike with a slack seat angle, it left this journalist wondering, but the proof is in the pudding and until you swing a leg over a bike everything else is just an assumption!
On The Trail
We were in Croatia to give this thing a spin and find out what it was all about. That is exactly what we did. Initially, I was going to go for the shorter advanced ride, but thanks to a suggestion from Laura and Cory (MBR and BikeRumour respectively), this was an eBike, and surely a battery test on the longer 56km ride was more suitable. It also meant I would get a lot more time on the bike and get to see more of the stunning Croatian scenery, if you have never been, stick it on your bucket list, it is that kind of a place!
The MRP engine delivers a smooth power flow, you can adjust the torque as I mentioned in the App. Mine was set to five, and the assist was ever present but never felt like it was overpowering the experience. You get 5 levels of boost on the bike, usually, it’s three, but let’s be honest, unless you are trying to eek the battery out we all stick on 5 and enjoy the ride. This of course I did and raced up the first major climb ready for lunch.
As ever this drained the batter way faster that Trump is draining the swamp and before we set off on the big loop from one of the most picturesque lunch spots I’ve ever been to, I was sitting on 64% battery. We were advised to swap them out if we had less than 65%, but this was a test, and we had been told the bike was capable of 100km of range from the 700wh battery. My 56k should be easy then. Of course, as I was now pushing the envelope in terms of the battery, I started to be a lot more conservative than my initial cavalier use of the fun switch to get up the hills...
The ride we went on belied the bike's strengths; the engine and long chain stays out the back make for a comfortable climbing experience. That steep head angle helps too, in fact when it came to going up you couldn’t really fault the G6. It was when you pointed it downhill that the numbers in the geometry started to unravel. It never felt planted or entirely at one with the trail, offering a somewhat skittish ride. The suspension did a remarkable job of keeping things manageable. I couldn’t help wonder with some serious enduro bike numbers how good this bike could be.
When you ride the G6, it’s almost more about the tech than it is the bike, and considering 70 bikes were getting rattled around the countryside the fact that, aside from punctures, there were no mechanicals is a testament to the build quality. The App, however, proved a little buggy, when you lost signal it would freeze and while the basis of the tech is there, the updates will no doubt iron out the inevitable errors I experienced.
In the end, I put the phone in my pocket and returned the bike to its more pure form of ebike rather than a supercomputer. In this guise, I instantly became less stressed about the app, and it’s functionality and the information it was feeding back and found myself more at one with the trails and the bike. Some riders will no doubt love the app, cameras and feedback you get, and I’ll admit when barrelling through some loose and technical terrain in a large group of unknowns it was good being able to see if anyone was going to hit you from behind. I enjoyed riding the bike as a bike, rather than a techno charged supercomputer, I am sure others will have a very different experience though.
Overall
The Greyp G6 shows us just what is possible with an ebike, the technology that we have at the moment barely scratches the surface and while the purists will hate it, there will no doubt be early adopters keen to tech out on the trails. When Strava first appeared with its gamification of our sport, there were plenty of people hating it. Now most of us use the app as it’s just so damn handy.
Could this be the future for the technology behind the G6? Only time will tell, but they certainly like to sell the tech they create if you look at the Rimac business model. With a large team at Greyp though this is far from a show horse, it’s the first serious mountain bike from a company that comes from the tech side of the fence, and it’s not bad at all. Discussions at the event lead to the news that there would be a hardtail and a more “bike orientated bike” in the pipeline. One with modern geometry and aimed at the MTB market.
The G6 by their own admission isn’t meant to be a giant killer, it’s there to put Greyp on the map in the industry. When you look at the striking design, the technology, cameras, sim card and GPS functionality, you have to hand it to them, Greyp have certainly arrived in style!
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This review was in Issue 58 of IMB.
For more information visit Greyp BikesRelated
By Rou Chater
Rou Chater is the Publishing Editor of IMB Magazine; he’s a jack-of-all-trades and master of none, but his passion for bikes knows no bounds. His first mountain bike was a Trek 820, which he bought in 1990. It didn’t take him long to earn himself a trip to the hospital on it, and he’s never looked back since. These days he’s keeping it rubber side down, riding locally and overseas as much as possible.
