After a busy spring, Norco released an aluminium version of its Sight VLT platform just on time for Sea Otter. Since we were down in California for the show, I was happy to get to the site a little early one morning to start my day off with a short spin around the Fort Ord trails before resuming the slow, dusty shuffle between booths.
The latest addition to Norco’s growing eMTB line is an interesting beast. To decode the lengthy naming convention the Canadian brand’s developed for its electric mountain bikes, this is the alloy frame iteration featuring Bosch’s new PX motor. That differentiates it from the release before that, the Sight VLT TQ C with TQ’s minimalist motor and a carbon carbon frame.
The biggest difference, though, is price. While the Bosch A-range is heavier, and more powerful, both important markers of performance, those differences are details compared to the several thousand dollar difference in entry point between the two models.
That is, it is no surprise, a bit part of the point in offering this new model. Electric mountain bikes are often positioned as a way to bring more riders into our sport or to provide accessibility to mountain biking through the provision of an assist. But if eMTB’s are $10K, or more, that’s not very accessible or an entry point with a very broad appeal.
At around $6,000, the A3 model is still expensive, to be clear. But it is literally half the cost of some of the top-end models. That is, as I found out in California, for a bike that is built to be trail-ready out of the box. The components are not top-of-the-line. But they are all perfectly capable of handling regular trail riding. The frame doesn’t feature Norco’s distinctive high-pivot design. But it does carry a lot of premium features, like size-specific rear centers and seat angles, that make it fit and feel like a more expensive machine. DVO suspension, with a Diamond fork and properly gravity-focused DVO Topaz shock, also feel quite solid on trail.
That’s not just marketing. Taking the sight VLT Bosch A3 (which I’m going to abbreviate to Sight A3 from here out, because we’re both tired of reading that), out on the trails around the sea of Sea Otter booths, it immediately feels balanced and comfortable. Like any of the Canadian brand’s other bikes. The PX motor isn’t Bosch’s fanciest, but it still has 600W max power, it still applies that power smoothly. And, at just over 50lbs, it is surprisingly competitive one…
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