Words and photos: Steve Jones
Shape and Purpose
One of the few, if only, downhill e bikes on the market, the intentions of this machine are clear, the opportunities insane. Considerably lower, slacker and longer than its NDuro stable mate our size large Haibike X Duro DWNHLL bike is on par in terms of geometry with most standard non-motor downhill bikes although in XL comes up larger than a Specialized Demo, Trek Session or Santa Cruz V10.
It’s clear this bike is for sessioning downhill tracks with rapid transit back to the start hut but it’s a bike that can easily be used to transfer with quite large distances involved. Obviously the geometry will make it slightly more rearwards biased than many other e-mtb’s which hinted that it might not be so adept at climbing than some but we were keen to see what the full range of possibilities were with the Haibike X Duro DWNHLL.