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Aug 22, 2023

New mid-travel, full-power ebike comes in three tiers, built for rugged terrain

This competition is now closed

By Tom Marvin

Published: August 1, 2023 at 8:00 am

Pivot has added another Shuttle to its line-up, with the Shuttle AM aimed at all-day rides in the hills and versatility the key goal.

It sits on 148mm of rear-wheel travel and 160mm at the front, placing it between the shorter and lighter Shuttle SL and the burly Shuttle LT. Pivot explains it’s basically a Pivot Switchblade with a motor.

The Shuttle AM is the brand’s first bike to use a Bosch motor, with the top-spec bike, built in limited numbers only, benefitting from the race-ready Performance CX Race electric bike motor.

The carbon-framed bike sticks with Dave Weagle’s DW-link suspension, as seen across all of the Arizona brand’s full-suspension bikes.

Carbon is used throughout the bike, with front and rear triangles being built from the fibre and resin-based material.

Two co-rotating links (when the suspension compresses, both links rotate clockwise if you’re looking at the bike from the driveside) join the two halves of the bike, as per Dave Weagle’s instructions.

The DW-link suspension is ideal for electric mountain bikes, according to Pivot, because the suspension doesn’t squat (compress) so much under power. With additional watts being squirted through to the back end thanks to the motor, this is ideal.

By reducing the interaction of pedal power and suspension squat, Pivot is then able to run lighter compression tunes on the shock, designed to improve feel.

The linkage also remains active under braking, has impressive square-bump absorption properties and contributes to a stiff rear half of the bike, because there are no pivots in the rear triangle to engineer around.

Add in plenty of mid-stroke support, and Pivot says the bike “swallows any terrain with total confidence and control, with enough platform to feel lively and pedal efficiently, and enough progression to crush rock gardens and nimbly land the biggest drops”. That’s quite the claim.

Pivot has used 157mm-wide Super Boost spacing for the rear.

Pivot has built the Shuttle AM with a vertically mounted shock. This leaves more room inside the main triangle for water bottles, or range-extending batteries.

It also means the top tube and down tube are free from having to deal with the forces generated through a shock mount. This means they can be lighter and makes it easier for Pivot to engineer in their desired ride characteristics.

The shock bolts into the already stout motor mounting area, instead.

The ride-quality issue also comes into play when you need to remove the battery.

Pivot hasn’t built an access door into the down tube for taking out the battery. Doing so, it says, means the whole front triangle becomes too stiff, and adds weight. Instead, if you want to remove the battery, you’ll have to take off the motor first.

Speaking of motors, Pivot has travelled to Germany for the drive unit on this model, rather than the Japanese Shimano EP8 motors plugged into its other bikes.

The latest-generation Bosch Performance CX motors have been used here.

The Pro and Team models get the standard motor, while the Race version sports the premium Race motor. This pumps out up to 400 per cent of your input, and provides up to 85Nm of torque.

The Race motor is said to be the lightest Bosch has ever made, and the power curves have been tweaked to suit racing requirements.

Pivot tells us Bosch needs to pre-approve bikes that are intended to feature this motor, to ensure it’s locked into the most appropriate bikes. It will only supply brands with 500 units, ensuring this is a sought-after bike.

As such, 300 of the Race model bikes will go to the US market, 100 to Europe and 100 to the rest of the world.

Power modes are pre-loaded, but with the Bosch x Pivot Flow app, these can be modified to suit your needs. It’ll also give you a head’s up on maintenance schedules, help find local dealers and give you plenty of battery and ride data to boot.

Across the models, a top-tube mounted display shows the mode and remaining battery level (in 10 per cent coloured bar increments), and features an on/off button. There’s then a simple wireless mode controller on the bars, ensuring a clean appearance.

The entry-level Pro model gets a 625Wh battery, while the Team and Race bikes have 750Wh batteries.

Later this year, we’re expecting to see a range-extending ‘PowerMore’ battery, offering an additional 250Wh. This will be mountable to the bottle mounts in the frame, meaning a full 1,000Wh of power could be carried.

Pivot hasn’t been extravagant with the bike’s shape, with angles and measurements all falling well within the usual moderately aggressive trail (or, ‘all-mountain’ if you want to call it as such) MTB bell curve.

There is a geometry flip chip, though. Going from the Low (listed below) to the High setting steepens angles by half a degree and adds 5mm to the bottom-bracket height.

Three models of the Shuttle AM will be offered by Pivot – the Pro, Team and Race.

The Pro receives a smaller-capacity battery, which contributes to the lower price, while the Race gets the limited-edition Race motor from Bosch.

Fox has been used for the suspension, will all bikes getting a 160mm 36 fork and a Float X shock. Shimano brakes are a preference pick from Pivot’s founder, Chris Cocalis, while SRAM’s Transmissions feature on the two pricier bikes. Praxis cranks are bolted on to the motor.

All bikes get identical tyres – a pair of Maxxis Minion DHF/DHRiis in 29×2.5/2.4in sizes, with MaxxTerra rubber and EXO+ casings.

Senior technical editor

Tom Marvin is a technical editor at BikeRadar.com and MBUK magazine. He has a particular focus on mountain bikes, but spends plenty of time on gravel bikes, too. Tom has written for BikeRadar, MBUK and Cycling Plus, and was previously technical editor of What Mountain Bike magazine. He is also a regular presenter on BikeRadar’s YouTube channel and the BikeRadar podcast. With more than twenty years of mountain biking experience, and nearly a decade of testing mountain and gravel bikes, Tom has ridden and tested thousands of bikes and products, from super-light XC race bikes through to the most powerful brakes on the market. Outside of testing bikes, Tom competes in a wide range of mountain bike races, from multi-day enduros through to 24-hour races in the depths of the Scottish winter – pushing bikes, components and his legs to their limits. He’s also worked out that shaving your legs saves 8 watts, while testing aerodynamics in a wind tunnel. When not riding he can be found at the climbing wall, in his garden or cooking up culinary delights.

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