Sea Otter: Gas Gas shows off (most of) a new eMTB race prototype

Spanish motorcycle company, Gas Gas, is getting serious about eMTB. While it’s not the first moto brand to try cross over to pedal bikes, and Gas Gas does already have something resembling an eMTB, the prototype race bike the brand was hiding at Sea Otter represents a very different approach to the mountain bike market.

This Gas Gas eMTB prototype looks much more refined than its current line

Gas Gas leans on partners for in-house approach

Gas Gas is still holding back many of the details about its new details, and many parts are unbranded components, but we did get to go back to a locked shipping container where they were hiding the bike, take a closer look, and draw our own conclusions. What we saw, and what Gas Gas was willing to share, could be very interesting for the eMTB market – and possibly mountain bikes more generally.

The new bike is Gas Gas’ first fully in-house designed eMTB and first bike seriously designed for racing. The Spanish brand is part of a larger group of motorcycle-related brands, which includes KTM and Husqvarna, and is using all those connections to create its first proper eMTB.

Gas Gas leaned on design firm KISKA’s new 35-employee team, made up of mostly bike industry vets, to create this carbon fibre bike. The prototype uses a mullet (27.5″ rear / 29″ front wheel) set-up, though Gas Gas says they may move to dual 29″ for the production model.

Suspension is, very interestingly, all in-house, too. The brand said they’ve partnered with an existing suspension brand to get the foundations of a mountain bike shock and fork, but also added their own technology to create the final product. Moto suspension brand WP is also part of the group that owns Gas Gas, so this could mark the entry of another motorized suspension brand (like Fox and öhlins) into the (mostly) pedal-powered world.

Gas Gas motor details — It is a motor, and a resonably small one, but that’s about all Gas Gas would say

The motor unit is also unbranded at this point. Gas Gas representatives would say very little about what was happening under the plain black cover. Aside from a SRAM XX Transmission drivetrain, most components on the bike were from Syntace, a long-running bicycle component brand that was recently acquired by the larger group Gas Gas is part of.