THE NEW LITHOS

With a full carbon frame and 170 mm of travel at either end, it’s made for taking on the toughest tracks, whether pushing hard with friends or racing against the clock. The geometry and kinematics have been engineered with a focus on carrying speed, no matter what the gradient or ground. Born from our experience in creating rock-solid e-MTBs, we’ve doubled down on versatility, durability and reliability, because you need absolute faith in your equipment and setup for flat-out technical riding. That’s why we’ve partnered with Bosch to fit their latest CX and CX Race drive units plus 600 and 800 Wh batteries, giving big-brand performance and reliability, with proven worldwide sales support.

The LITHOS stands as our flagship e-MTB, designed for speed on any terrain. While our other Bosch-powered ebikes have a focus on affordable performance (ETMO) or bike park fun (eONE-EIGHTY), the LITHOS is about squeezing out every drop of momentum from the mountain.

Thanks to having a straight seat tube on all sizes of LITHOS frame, we can use our TEAM TR II dropper post on all bikes. With a maximum travel of 230 mm, it can be adjusted in travel down to just 30 mm without using any tools, so you always get the maximum amount of dropper post travel for maximum saddle clearance, no matter how tall or short you are.

When creating the LITHOS, our design philosophy was guided by three key pillars.

At the heart of the LITHOS is our carbon fibre frame. With a lifetime warranty as standard, it’s built to handle riding and racing on technical trails without complaint. It was also important to balance low weight and compliance with accurate and predictable handling. We also wanted to use removable batteries in the downtube to allow easy battery changes and also easy access to cables.

We now also offer the option of routing all cables through our neat WIREPORT headset or through the frame’s THERMO GATE vents for a semi-internal routing. All cables get internal moulded guides to make routing easy too.

This versatility continues with our rear wheel flip chip, which allows you to run a full 29“ setup for pure speed or the standard mixed 29/27.5“ setup for a balance of stability and agility, all without changing the geometry. In the full 29“ setup, there is 160 mm of rear wheel travel and a chainstay length of 449 mm, versus 174 mm and a 447 mm stay with the mixed setup.

We use our proven flexstay suspension design to remove the seatstay pivot for lower maintenance, and also use extra-large bearings everywhere else to keep the back end smooth for longer. Like all of our full-suspension bikes, all bolts use a 4 or 6 mm Hex, so you can easily tighten them at the trailside using the tool hidden in the rear axle or our saddle-mounted multitool. We’ve also put a lot of effort into shielding the bike from damage, with transparent foil and rubber frame protection fitted as standard to prevent damage to the bike, especially around the chainstays.

We’ve developed the suspension kinematic from the award-winning eONE-SIXTY SL and eONE-EIGHTY, giving excellent small bump performance with the latest generation of high-volume air shocks as well as coil compatibility. This design removes the shock yoke to prevent side-loading and premature wear, boosting durability, but allows us to get a perfect balance of pedalling efficiency, small-bump performance and big-hit control.

When designing the new LITHOS, we tested multiple carbon fibre layups to get the correct amount of compliance in the rear end. Compliance describes how much the material flexes under load, and we can tune it by adding or removing material. A frame needs to be stiff enough that it responds precisely and predictably under high loads. However, too much stiffness can cause a bike to have poor traction as the rear wheel is more likely to ‘skip’ on small bumps rather than allowing the tyre to remain in contact with the ground. A too-stiff frame will also feel harsh and transmit a lot of trail buzz to the rider, making the bike uncomfortable and more tiring.

To get the balance correct, we did blind back-to-back testing with a wide variety of riders, from EDR racers to weekend warriors, with a wide variety of tester builds and weights, too. The end result was unanimous, with a slightly more compliant rear triangle than we have used in the past being favoured by all the riders.