Intradrive Mid drive motor and 8 sp gearbox (EP8 mount)

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Looks a great idea, the unit is a bit ugly but that will change with development.
 
This one seems to be moving along a bit. The EP8/E8000 mounting makes it idea for manufacturers to consider instead or to be used as a replacement.

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Obviously, that would be no use if you couldn't get/use a compatible battery, so fortunately their batteries are also being designed around the Shimano mounting system.

The whole thing is supposedly also designed to be servicable......

Orange Phase test bike fitted with the system.

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Images from Pinkbike :

www.pinkbike.com

Orange Reveals a Gearbox Belt Driven eMTB Using the Intradrive Motor - Eurobike 2022 - Pinkbike

An orange Orange eMTB with an 8-speed gearbox motor.
www.pinkbike.com www.pinkbike.com

Potentially less torque in emtb configuration, but that post was almost a year ago, so things may have changed ..

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Derailleurs are shit for MTBing, always collecting vegetation and other debris. The sooner get rid of them the better.
 
In over 30 years of cycling/mountain biking, I’ve broken exactly ONE derailleur and that was on a flat piece of cycle path. I don’t get the hate for derailleurs.
 
You must be lucky, bent a derailleur during the second month of the new bike and always have one spare. Will be glad to see them replaced by motor gearbox combo.
 
singletrackworld.com

Intra Drive crowdfunding UK production of gearbox e-bike drive

Do you share a vision of a UK-built ultra-durable and repairable e-bike gearbox drivetrain? Think along the lines of the MGU from Pinion.
singletrackworld.com singletrackworld.com

From 2 Nov 2023
TLDR: Intra Drive Ltd has announced an equity crowdfunding campaign on Crowdcube to start production.

Please let this be successful and get rid of derailleurs for good!
 
Has anyone heard anything more from Intradrive? Like power, torque, cost and availability? Will you be able to fit them ourselves and will they require their own battery or work with existing ones.

I’m trying to make plans for when the EP801 shits there bed and I need something for the Decoy.
 
It's interesting that that Intradrive shares the same mounting as Shimano, though it's less clear if Shimao battery tech is shared as well and the controller will probably be their own. As such, I doubt it will be a plug and play retrofit, but damn cool if it could be. Their idea to pare down the spur gear cluster (i.e. less gears) makes the MGU smaller and lighter.

It's unfortunate there is so little traction in the MGU space beside Pinion. I don't recall if Interdrive was even at Eurobike 2025? Villiger Dynamic wasn't there. The next gen Owuru/E2 hybrid stepless MGU showed the most promise there, but release is like 2 years out. A big player is really needed with a lot of backing to break the MGU chasm.
 

The product looks pretty developed and as someone that has always viewed the Pinion MGU as a complete turd, this one really looks like a home run.

They are saying release in 4th quarter 2026 so maybe some of the new bike releases scheduled for around that time, have already lined this product up in their development cycle.

There is also a rumor that it uses Shimano mounting pattern so could be a drop in for Shimano motors.

I will say that I borrowed a gearbox pedal bike once, I think it was a Zerode. It pedaled poorly but the rear suspension performance was other worldly and the silence was amazing.
 
Suns_PSD said:

The product looks pretty developed and as someone that has always viewed the Pinion MGU as a complete turd, this one really looks like a home run.

They are saying release in 4th quarter 2026 so maybe some of the new bike releases scheduled for around that time, have already lined this product up in their development cycle.

There is also a rumor that it uses Shimano mounting pattern so could be a drop in for Shimano motors.

I will say that I borrowed a gearbox pedal bike once, I think it was a Zerode. It pedaled poorly but the rear suspension performance was other worldly and the silence was amazing.
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Agree on multiple fronts. It's about time this motor is finally making its way into the market. That it has ostensibly the same motor profile as Shimano meant quite a bit more back when it was announced years ago before Bosch/Avinox effectively captured the market.

For MGUs to take off, you need a good product, and at the moment there is nothing out there that fits the bill. Keeping the complexity, weight, and size down is important and I like Intradrive's take on this: basically reducing the number gears and taking a hit on gear range reduces the gearbox moving parts count (wouldn't fly for gearbox on an MTB, but fair game with motor assist at hand). I don't know about the internals but IF they don't use a carriage to multiply the ratios, the you would get a consistent gear changing experience in the whole range.

This kind of refinement from Intradrive is welcome against the current very limited unrefined offerings (we will see what SRAM produces at some point) out there. Still, I would like to have some big players swing for the fences with ECVT and pedal-by-wire approaches.

It sure does seem that EMBN's superlative take on the downhill suspension experience aligns with your Zerode experience - this is to me the most important reason for the industry to move to MGUs: basically the liberation of rear suspension.
 

Getting closer, I like how it has 8 gears. I usually shift twice up and down so I kinda have a really expensive 6 speed!
 
2WHLFUN said:

Getting closer, I like how it has 8 gears. I usually shift twice up and down so I kinda have a really expensive 6 speed!
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The best thing about this video is that we finally get a riding assessment of this motor. I tried to getting a ride demo at Sea Otter, but they blew me off because I wasn't a product manager. There was an air of desperation at the booth to get some bike brands locked in and I didn't blame them because of the sense that any moment a big player could drop into the space and clobber the market. Well that only took a couple of months.

Still though, I'm glad they are much closer to releasing the motor so we get a better sense of how a better designed MGU fares in the market. Compared to the Pinion, it's smaller, lighter, and having less gears has a lot to do with it. There's less gear ratio here, but the motor seems a bit quieter with the gear meshing during changes a bit more predictable than the Pinion. But they have a very limited window to establish themselves (they are such a small outfit after all) now as MGU's as a category will be going up against big players in ECVT.
 
Bomble said:
Think I’d rather have a derailleur than this.

View attachment 188868

View attachment 188869
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These are prototype hacks, it’s probably worth remembering.

The belt drive one looked neater, but I suppose it will be up to bike manufacturers to implement their own tensioner solutions depending on their own frame design/pivots/kinematics etc.

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I’m quite excited by the Intradrive approach, not just because it’s a Scottish company worthy of our support but also that I like the mechanical approach of a gearbox and the way it still seems to be a ‘bicycle’ and needs to be ridden as such.

Companies like this one is why I don’t like the idea of one or two giants dominating the space, talk of you know who ‘killing the competition’ is exactly that and I don’t think it’s very good for any of us in the long run.
 
They missed out on their trump card holding out for a big client.
Their MGU uses the same mounting pattern as Shimano and they teased backwards compatibility.
Had they released to the general public there would already be loads of ambassadors out there (if it is any good).
I fear the boat has already sailed as far as they are concerned unless they can find a niche to carve out for themselves such as the aforementioned retrofit market.
 
04fuxake said:
In over 30 years of cycling/mountain biking, I’ve broken exactly ONE derailleur and that was on a flat piece of cycle path. I don’t get the hate for derailleurs.
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Same here, my first mountain bike was a 1984 Schwinn High Sierra....And still waiting to rip off my rear derailleur!
 
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