“Looks flimsy – don’t think I’d trust it for daily use”, “Looks tiny, must be uncomfortable on longer rides” and “Tiny wheels, tiny range. Prove me wrong!” are some of the comments that inspired Project Snowdon.
We’re putting the M2 to the ultimate test to show you what this bike is capable of…
this is the Flit M2 a compact lightweight folding ebike we’ve designed this bike with city commuting and urban exploring in mind we’ve seen the comments about small wheels and we’ve read the misconceptions about folding ebikes online and we’re going to be proving them wrong we’re taking the M2 on its most extreme adventure yet from city streets to mountain peaks we’re cycling the M2 up Snowden [Music] going off soden is a challenge whether you’re on a mountain bike or hiking cycling on a bike that’s specifically designed for city commuting is going to be a challenge on a different sort of level we’re going to have to look at the roots the mountain bikers are already doing and work out what routes and what surfaces this can get over we’re going to have to see if there are anything that we can do to adapt the bike for the challenge in mind and given that I’m cycling it well Kenisha has decided that I’m cycling it anything the engineers can do to help is going to be greatly appreciated so let’s go see what they can do okay so Matt we’re obviously project Snowden um which we’ve sort of given you a bit of information about we are going to take this bad boy up Snowden um we found a route um from Clanberis which we think is is ridable um we’ve also we found we found videos of mountain bikers doing it so it’s definitely ridable on a mountain bike however what if anything should we can we do to get the M2 more ready for the challenge i think the M2 will be fine i’m more worried about you oh thanks well okay that be that’d be a good situation that’s absolutely fine i’m also worried about me i mean so M2 is obviously designed with city riding in mind and uh for that reason you know it’s got fairly upright geometry um it’s pretty light and responsive it’s obviously got smaller wheels mhm it’s almost the exact opposite to a mountain bike where you’ve got kind of quite slack geometry uh big wide handlebars so you can really um you know crank it around bends and and not have to worry about little little bumps kind of throwing you off um so yeah th those would probably be my main main concerns but yeah I mean the the rider is such a big part of the system of a bike right in terms of handling that it it it will probably just come down to your bike handling skills yeah um what about pedals and because obviously these are the sort of like city style standard pedals that we fit mhm do we want for this just for this challenge do we want to fit something that is perhaps metal a bit more robust or even maybe a cleat i don’t know yeah I’m not too worried about the robustness of the pedals i guess slip feet slipping off and it’s maybe a bit more of a concern um in terms of battery so 7k it is uphill the whole way um we’re going to be obviously we range test our batteries to um level three assist across a variety of terrain not just uphill this is going to be just going uphill do we think we’ll do that on one battery yeah I think so I think so yeah even if it’s on max the whole way okay if it’s fully charged at the top I don’t think that’ll be an issue okay awesome I think Okay so So you’re going to be riding down as well yes um so in summary your biggest worry is me i’m I’m the weakest link the rider is the weakest link well yeah it’s not just that right it’s like the right tool for the right the right job but it will survive yeah I think it I think it will survive i don’t think it’ll be easy and no uh don’t know how it’ll be fun maybe it will be a challenge so we did actually learn quite a bit from speaking to Matt there mainly that Crisen will possibly be the weakest link in this challenge it’s obviously not a fun thing to hear but it does make sense if you think about it in terms of bike handling and possibly confidence like it’s not the easiest challenge to undertake we’ll be switching out a couple of bits on the bike to make this as comfortable for Chrisen as possible though i did think it was also quite reassuring to hear that Matt thinks that the bike was absolutely fine and I think that gave both me and Chrisin a little bit of a confidence boost to actually go through this challenge that being said we’ve never really done any proper off-road testing with the bike which is something that we’ll definitely have to do before we take the bike up Snowden both Matt and Crisen have participated in the London Hill Climb Challenge of Swain’s Lane which has a gradient of about 20% and the bike behaved wonderfully so I don’t see that being an issue at all as Crisen said after doing some research we have found what we think is the best path for us to take the bike up Snowden we’ll be taking a Clamaris path which is the most popular path and follows the Snowden Mountain Railway up to the summit the Claris path is roughly a 14.5 km round trip with an ascent of 975 m on foot it should take us roughly seven hours but obviously we’re going to be cycling up so it should hopefully take a little bit less time than that whilst it is the longest route it does offer the most gradual climb to the peak which is why this is such a popular route with other cyclists and will be for us as well of course we don’t just want to cycle the bike up Snowden and call it a day so Kristen and I have decided that apart from this challenge style video we also want to be filming a more narrativebased video with a professional videography team think it’s going to be a lot of work um but both of us and I think the rest of the team here at Flit are extremely excited to see what happens next and I hope that you guys are too please stay tuned for our next video in which we will be going on our location scout and we’ll be taking the bike on its very first offroad trip see you soon
2 Comments
My 20 inch aluminium wheel frame has blown out, going fast and hitting drain grids on the road my second wheel this has happened to . I like the compact size but the damage and replacement cost is annoying. I'd recommend bigger wheels
Just why would anyone think riding a bike up a mountain path is anywhere near a sensible idea?
There are thousands of walkers using that path and why are so special that you want to destroy their leisurely walk not even using a proper pedal cycle?
Point of law for you, riding bikes on a footpath is against the law!