Bicycles

Bees modular bike transforms and adapts to your riding

Bees modular bike transforms and adapts to your riding
The Bees Bike at Eurobike 2015
The Bees Bike at Eurobike 2015
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The Bees Bike at Eurobike 2015
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The Bees Bike at Eurobike 2015
Altinsoy is planning to first launch an e-bike with a Brose mid-motor and BMZ battery
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Altinsoy is planning to first launch an e-bike with a Brose mid-motor and BMZ battery
The modular hardtail adapter takes the place of the rear shock
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The modular hardtail adapter takes the place of the rear shock
The Bees Bike is made to be adjusted and personalized like no other
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The Bees Bike is made to be adjusted and personalized like no other
The Bees Bike at Eurobike 2015
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The Bees Bike at Eurobike 2015
The Bees Bike provides an interesting alternative to your typical frame
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The Bees Bike provides an interesting alternative to your typical frame
The Bees Bike at Eurobike 2015
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The Bees Bike at Eurobike 2015
Altinsoy builds its frame from a light alloy
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Altinsoy builds its frame from a light alloy
The modular frame features a generous amount of adjustability
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The modular frame features a generous amount of adjustability
Altinsoy shows the bike with a DT Swiss rear shock
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Altinsoy shows the bike with a DT Swiss rear shock
Gates Carbon Drive
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Gates Carbon Drive
Bees Bike
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Bees Bike
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For generations, mountain bikers have had to make the sometimes difficult choice between affordable, nimble-climbing hardtails and fast, cushy full-suspension bikes. German company Altinsoy Manufaktur has a different idea. Its Bees Bike has a completely modular design that lets you quickly change over from hardtail to full suspension. You can also adjust sizing and positioning with ease.

One of the interesting standouts at Eurobike 2015, the Bees Bike makes clear that it's not your typical bicycle from the moment it catches your eye. Even in a world where we have everything from wooden bicycles, to diminutive folding bicycles, to bicycles dressed up as motorcycles, the Bees Bike stands out. It has a beefy trellis-style frame made from a "special light alloy."

The modular hardtail adapter takes the place of the rear shock
The modular hardtail adapter takes the place of the rear shock

Its look is unique, but it's the modular design that really separates the Bees Bike from the pack. The bike adjusts around the rider through an integrated system of bolts and mounts. In this way, the bike can adjust to better fit your body and riding style. Of most interest is the stabilizer bar that can be swapped in for the DT Swiss rear shock, creating a fully metal hardtail in place of a springy pivoting rear triangle.

While a nice way of packing hardtail and full-suspension into a single bike, we wonder if the Bees design will provide the same level of smoothness as a hardtail frame construction or even the lock-outs and semi lock-outs common on rear shocks. The swap-in hardtail component looks solid enough, but if there's even a little jiggle at the mounting points, it could prove inferior to a solid-frame hardtail in terms of rear-wheel stability, pedaling performance and feel. We'd recommend a thorough test ride before you buy.

Altinsoy is planning to first launch an e-bike with a Brose mid-motor and BMZ battery
Altinsoy is planning to first launch an e-bike with a Brose mid-motor and BMZ battery

Altinsoy plans to begin selling its bikes through a small dealer network following Eurobike. First up will be an electric bike with a mid-motor drive supplied by Brose and a battery from BMZ. Altinsoy will follow that model up with standard pedal bikes next year. The company told us that it's a small operation with the capability to build about 10 bikes a day.

Full-bike prices should hover around €3,500 (US$3,950), but since Altinsoy plans to sell the frames to bicycle dealers and have them work with customers in building up their individual bikes, pricing is sure to fluctuate based on selected components. The company is displaying its bikes with a component set that includes a Gates Carbon belt drive, Rohloff Speedhub 500/14 and RockShox Bluto fork.

Altinsoy also has an active Kickstarter campaign out there, but it seems designed more for raising brand awareness than money. The company is offering only a €10 donation level, and at about €250 out of a €111K goal, it seems like the campaign is sure to be unsuccessful, barring some type of huge single donation or miracle.

We hope to update with more information and video when these bikes start rolling out of the factory and onto the street.

Source: Bees Bike

View gallery - 12 images
6 comments
6 comments
The Hoff
The look is kinda cool but belt drive is not as efficient and I don't like to pedal harder just to be stylish. Also it's made from a mystery metal and no mention of weight so it's going to be on the heavy side. I'm not sure of the crowd they're shooting for here but it's not serious mountainbikers.
Island Architect
How much does it weigh? That is the central question.
Along with the fact that Sir Clive Moulton knew that any hard tail disperses jounce energy as heat. Soft tails attached so the the thrust is forward is the reason that his cycles held the speed records for years.
He was a great engineer and he also was fully aware of Bill Allison.
b
David Earnest
This is a true work of art. Beautiful to look at indeed. But absolutely useless in the real world. At a ludicrous $4000! There are far more practical offerings for a quarter the price.
fearnow
It is a wonder of possibility. I want rugged, I want customizable, I'd like quiet. Weight is weight - it can't weigh all that much and with what it offers it'll never be at carbon levels anyway. But that's okay in my book. For the repli-racers not so much perhaps.
unklmurray
The Bees Bike has a really Kule look to it, and while the $3950 sounds rather spendy, I would certainly be saving up my Dinero 4-2 buy mine......
sk8dad
That special "light metal" looks to be Aluminum. My guess is that the frame in full-suspension mode would weigh at least 20 lbs. Plate design would also imply less-that-optimal torsional and lateral rigidity. The inordinate number of fasteners represents increased failure points. The suspension design is a centralized single pivot which which will cause significant pedal-bob.
BTW, at this price range almost all full-suspension XC/trail/AM bikes can be turned into more or less a hardtail just by switching the shock into locked mode.
As far as modular design, this looks like a billet version of the San Andreas which is now considered prehistoric in suspension bike design. Nothing new here.
Let's see... $4000 will get me a 45-lb copy-cat of an obsolete bike design bike sporting countless fasteners and massive flex that pedals like a marshmallow...I'll take three.
Just another design exercise.