Honda is best known for motorcycles, cars, generators, lawnmowers, robots, jets… basically anything with a motor attached to it. But now the Japanese giant appears ready to add another two-wheeler to that list: an electric mountain bike.
Honda recently showed off its new e-MTB project at Sea Otter Europe in Girona, Spain, marking a surprisingly serious return to the mountain bike world after an absence of roughly two decades.
And this doesn’t appear to be merely a styling exercise. Honda’s German website is already inviting riders to register their interest in the upcoming e-MTB, declaring, “New terrain, same dream,” and describing the bike as “almost here.”
The prototype itself combines Honda’s motorcycle-inspired design with some decidedly familiar bicycle hardware. The carbon monocoque frame was developed with German premium e-bike manufacturer Rotwild through its ADP Engineering division, and features a massive rear swingarm that Honda calls the “Gullarm.”
The suspension uses a single-pivot arrangement with several linkages driving the rear shock, while a Fox 36 fork, mullet 29-inch front and 27.5-inch rear wheel setup, and aggressive geometry make it pretty clear Honda isn’t designing this thing for leisurely rides to the farmers market.
The display bike also uses a Shimano EP8-series mid-drive motor, though there may be another surprise lurking there. Footage released alongside the bike appears to show a slightly different motor casing than Shimano’s current EP801.
That’s hardly enough evidence to declare that a new Shimano motor is coming, but it certainly gives us something interesting to squint at until Honda provides more details.
Honda’s involvement in mountain biking actually goes back more than 20 years. Its motorcycle R&D division famously developed the RN01 downhill bike in the early 2000s, complete with an unusual enclosed, frame-mounted transmission. Honda raced the radical machine internationally before eventually pulling out of the sport.
That makes this return particularly interesting. Honda isn’t simply slapping its logo on a generic e-bike as many other automotive and motorcycle companies have done. The company even displayed the new machine alongside the old RN01 and its latest electric motorcycles and off-road prototypes.
Honda hasn’t announced the battery capacity, final motor, weight, price, production name, or launch markets yet.
But considering Honda is already collecting registrations for what it calls its “new E-Mountainbike,” this looks less like Honda wondering whether it should build an e-bike and more like the company preparing to actually sell one.
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