What happens if you put a 4,000 watt motor—nearly five horsepower—on a bicycle built of strong, lightweight materials? I’ll tell you: pure craziness, heart-filling joy, and power pedaling at high speeds you could only dream of before.


This is what the Trefecta e-bike provides to anyone brave (and wealthy) enough to take it for a ride.

Or me. Despite having never ridden a motorcycle nor an electric bike, I was fortunate enough to get to try the Trefecta and hang out with its creators, Haiko H. G. Visser and Frank Hartman, for a few days.


We met at the Austrian Grand Prix, in Spielberg, Austria, at the red and yellow truck of Spanish GP2 team Racing Engineering—for which Trefecta is a sponsor. You may wonder: why does an electric bike company support a high-tech racing team? After a few days of closely examining and testing this bike, it made perfect sense to me.



This bike belongs to Alfonso de Orleans-Borbon, president and owner of Racing Engineering GP2

Haiko (who is the Chairman of the Board at Trefecta Mobility, and a rolling salesman and inspired advocate of his own product at the same time) could talk for hours about the development of Trefecta, during and between two publicity bike tours around the Red Bull Ring. He had to talk a lot about. Everyone who saw the three almost unreal vehicles wanted to know, what the actual hell were those? Stealth motorcycles? Batbikes? Military equipment?


“This is Trefecta, a powerful electric bike, designed by Dutch, German and Swiss engineers. Wanna try? Then be careful with the throttle, unless you want to do a wheelie!” He must have said something along those lines dozens of times during those three days at the Austrian GP.


Haiko demonstrates how easy it is to do a wheelie

And when he talked about doing a wheelie, he was not exaggerating. When turning the throttle built into the right side of the handlebar, it was able to lift me right off the ground. “Am I able to handle all this power underneath my fat ass?” I asked myself. And then: “Woooooowowow, oh my god.”


Riding a single-fork Trefecta

Not to say the bike is necessarily hard to control. The hydraulically controlled and automatically shifting HSP2-14 drivetrain lets the eMotor react in a surprisingly smooth and quick way, and it sent me screaming down a road at unusually high speeds while the vehicle between my legs remained stable. And when I say unusually high speed, I mean it: During the test rides I reached 40-45 mph speeds, often without pedaling. When you add human power to the performance—using the so-called Smesh Gear Pedelec System—one can comfortably reach and maintain 60mph. Fast enough that it might be illegal in your country.


With that much power you can burn some rubber

Off-road is just as awesome. We–Haiko and I–rolled out of the GP2 paddocks onto one of the fallow lands nearby, and pedaling on soft, muddy, weedy soil was surprisingly fun. The active suspension system on the wheels, combined with some serious torque, made it super easy to cross the field. I could also do tight turns which felt impossible for a conventional mountain bike on such terrain.


How does it handle hills? I am not a very sporty man at all (I commute every day by bike, but always avoid uphill streets whenever possible because I hate to sweat and wheeze) but I found Trefecta could carry me silently up its back on any upward road or off-road section like a friendly superhorse.

Just imagine an almost 30-40 degree grassy slope in front of you. If you’re riding Trefecta, the only thing you have to do is to switch from low to high gear, by pushing a button on the left grip, and spin the throttle on the right grip. It’ll pull you up like a mountain goat on wheels.


Trefecta in its natural environment

The man-machine hybrid has a pretty slick design, too. The Trefecta’s 20-inch frame is actually a dust and waterproof exoskeleton housing the battery pack, the electric motor, and the gearbox.


It’s machined from injection moulded 7075 high-grade aluminum alloy, which is primarily used in the aerospace industry, and often referred to as the strongest aluminum alloy, as strong as many steels but with aluminum’s lightweight qualities.

Plus, the bike sits on extremely tough but also lightweight six-spoke carbon fiber wheels, and several other parts are manufactured of carbon fiber as well. The result is a sturdy vehicle that can hold up to 350 pounds of rider and cargo.


And did I mention the Trefecta can fold? Not something you’d do every day, perhaps, considering the bike weighs nearly 85 pounds, but handy for long-term storage.

Here is an incomplete—although still lengthy—list of the Trefecta’s features:

Range: 100 km (without pedaling)



Seat: Ergon SM3-L Pro Carbon with Dropper Seatmast



Suspension: upside down fork 180mm (twin fork), Trailtronic electronically controlled suspension



Battery: quick release interchangeable 60-volt Li-ion battery pack, can regenerate during braking and downhill riding



Standard charger: 3 hours charge



Fast charger (optional): 1 hour charge



Controls: Trefecta - ALU steer with Ergon GP1 Grip built in Trefecta Fly-by-wire controls and throttle, combined with Trefecta Integrated backlit Display



Hybrid system: Smesh Gear Pedelec System, integrated Rohloff 14 speed gearbox, electronic gear shifting, automatic gear shifting



Brakes: Hope V4 callipers, Hope EVO Tech V3 Levers, Hope Floating Ventilated 203mm discs



Wheels: interchangeable 26” carbon fibre leightweight wheels



Connectivity: wifi, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Trefecta iOS App

Customization: single fork or twin fork, 3 Pedelec support modes (Normal, Power, Custom), Trailtronic suspension setup via Trefecta iOS App, Custom pedelec mode setup via Trefecta iOS App


At this point you can probably guess the main problem with this bike. It’s expensive. Even the basic Trefecta bike–the urban version with lower performance–costs nearly $25,000 USD. Clearly it is not marketed for me, but for those who possess two or three Ferraris, Lamborghinis, or Aston Martins, a few yachts and often go to their offices by helicopter... they might feel the itch to have such a special vehicle in the garage. So far the company has assembled and sold about 20 Trefecta bikes, and received more than 500 pre-orders.


If you get tired of yours and would like to donate it to Gizmodo, please let us know.

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Photo, video, gif: Attila Nagy/Gizmodo

