It’s usually easy to tell whether a bike has pedal-assist or not – e-bikes tend to come with a dedicated battery compartment or a larger-than-usual frame to fit a battery inside. That’s not the case with the Gogoro Eeyo, an e-bike that looks every bit like a regular road bike for getting around in paved city roads.
Unlike most pedal-assist bikes, this e-bike has a frame that looks no different than those on traditional bicycles, with neither a battery compartment loaded on it nor extra room in the tubes to fit the battery module. That way, you can pretend you’re exercising every time you go out riding, instead of actually letting the pedal assist do all the work of propelling you forward, turning you across corners, and sending you up a sloped road.
The Gogoro Eeyo manages to keep the battery away from the frame by using an all-in-one drive that combines the motor, battery, and other electronics into a disc-shaped box on the rear hub, so the entire operation that runs the pedal-assist happens inside that enclosed section. The box is actually quite conspicuous, as it’s not something you’ll usually find in the rear wheel, so it does sort of give away the vehicle’s motor-powered nature.
The built-in hub motor can propel it to speeds of up to 19 mph, which should be fast enough to get you to work every morning, especially since you don’t have to wait in traffic every few minutes like all the other cars on the road. That motor is powered by a 123Wh battery, which can keep the pedal-assist going for up to 40 miles, likely making it enough to get you to work and back in just one full charge. In case your commute is much longer, you can also charge the battery at work by plugging in to a wall outlet. According to the outfit, it can charge from a fully-drained state in 2.5 hours.
The Gogoro Eeyo doesn’t have physical controls for operating the motor. Instead, it’s all reliant on the companion app, which pairs with the bike over Bluetooth, so you’ll have to mount your phone on the handlebars every time you use the bike. That’s right, you’ll have to use the app to even turn on the motor, so you have to make sure your phone is with you (and properly charged) if you plan to ride it without doing all the pedaling yourself.
It actually has a unique frame design that eliminates the seat tube entirely, with the top tube serving as the seat stay. We have to say, we’re impressed with the design, as it makes for a different aesthetic that’s quite unlike many bicycles we’ve seen before. Granted, removing the seat tube makes it a little harder to adjust the seat height, as you’ll need to open two panels on the underside of the frame and loosen the clamp that keeps the seat in place.
The Gogoro Eeyo comes in two models: Eeyo 1, which uses a mix of carbon and alloy for the components and Eeyo 1s, which uses all carbon fiber construction. Price is $3,899 and $4,599, respectively.