Marin’s E-Bike Was Secretly Based On A Yamaha YZ250!?

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]I was involved with the Levo project before I left at Specialized. So, I'd already kind of like drank in front of the garden hose and like drank the Kool-Aid and I was like, "Oh, e-bikes.

[00:00:08]Let's go."

[00:00:09]Um So, I knew we needed e-bikes and it took us a little while. It wasn't until 2021 that Marin first came out with a full suspension mountain e-bike. We had a Nail Trail E before that, which was a little bit before its time with a Shimano system and EP8. Um but the Alpine Trail E with the Shimano kit was our first like proper e-bike and that thing was I it really worked quite well. Until Until we have something that comes out June 5th, I honestly think that was probably the best e-bike we'd ever made.

[00:00:35]>> Really? Yeah. Okay.

[00:00:37]>> Like that was a good one. So, how do you go about walking like making that product? I'm going to tell if you could kind of break down from the start. Okay, you've you've identified there's a hole in the product range.

[00:00:47]>> Yeah. How do you get that ball rolling to start to provide the bikes?

[00:00:51]>> right from the top CEO and and everyone's like, "Hey, the our really the consumers as in our sales team and marketing like, "Hey, >> That feeding information back. We need >> this year. As a product manager, our job is to say, "Okay, what's going on?

[00:01:02]What's happening? In 3 years, this is going to be it, right? Cuz that's about the time it takes to make it, develop it and have it hit the the right time.

[00:01:10]>> Yeah.

[00:01:13]And so, when we talk about an e-bike versus an analog bike in terms of a suspension bike. So, we need to design the tubing, we need to do the kinematics, we need to get it all in a packaging that fits, that's light, that hits the weight target, the stiffness requirements, every box.

[00:01:26]Now, we need to integrate a battery, an on switch, wires, controllers, and a drive unit.

[00:01:33]>> Mhm. So, it really adds a lot.

[00:01:35]>> A lot to it. Yeah. And there's a lot of engineering challenges and tooling challenges that come with that um that are different than a normal bike. Then you start at Oh, wait, it it weighs a a lot more. Okay, it puts more stress on the bike. It it flexes more. We need a row more robust bearings. So, there's all this stuff that you kind of learn. And the nice thing is we kind of sat back and watched a bit. I'm like, "Okay, like you did that. That didn't really work out. Like don't you don't do that."

[00:02:03]Um and we got to where we're at with the Alpine Trail E, which was kind of like, "Let's just take our Alpine Trail analog and just make it as good as we can to climb with an e-bike." And at the time I was doing a lot of dirt biking, so our our 2021 Alpine Trail E is actually based off a YZ250 steering geometry and chassis. No way. Yeah.

[00:02:29]No way. That's super interesting. All right.

[00:02:32]>> What way? Like what aspects does it take in >> John Oldale would not allow me to tell this story at the time. Everyone was like, "You know, you cannot talk about e-bikes in terms of like a motorcycle."

[00:02:41]I'm like, "But my motorcycle climbs, it descends, and it rips flat turns like a boss." Like >> Yeah, yeah. Why wouldn't I want all those things in my e-bike? So really a lot of our e-bike development and that like my all of the kind of methy methodology of making the bike is more from a dirt bike standpoint.

[00:03:02]>> Wow. So I do like I like I like me a good ride on a motorbike.

[00:03:06]>> Yeah, and my motorbike background. That might explain why I like my e-bike so much.

[00:03:11]It's like the YZ250.

[00:03:13]So in like that like those are heavy machines, but it's about how where and how you put the weight and how it flexes and how the geometry works to make it work well. So like that's one thing we focus on all of our bikes and e-bikes kind of triple down on that mentality of Mhm. where you put the weight matters, how you build the bike in terms of stiffness, and we're talking about rear stiffness from the bottom bracket to the head tube, stiffness bottom bracket to the seat tube, stiffness bottom bracket to the rear axle. All that stuff matters. And it matters for your size.

[00:03:39]It's crazy. It's fun. These rabbit holes are fun. Yeah, they are. And so you're Are you doing that as well? You working with a technician or how does it Where are you drawing up models? So um there's a lot of different ways. Like we have a pretty small team, so we need to be very, um, diligent have good processes to make sure we're documenting things in the right phase. We have a stiffness database that we get of all those things. We can look at those and go, "Okay, what's going on here?"

[00:04:02]"This felt like this and had that stiffness numbers." You can start correlating all these things together. And so, like, it's a bit of everything. The hard part is is we have a very short window to make something. So, we need to make it right the first time. And we don't have like a huge time to test it.

[00:04:18]Like, we could, but that would be kind of wasteful and cost a lot of money, and it's really fun, but it's not commercially smart. So, one thing that really Marin does well is we we have an idea, we execute on it, and we come out with it. And that's one of the reasons our bikes are affordable. It's less We spend less time to engineer it, so therefore, we don't have to make up that money on the other hand. So, there's like a lot of different ways you can get there. So, that's kind of a fun bit.

[00:04:40]>> And what How long's that time frame? So, from feedback from reps, for example, to you guys sitting down be like, "Right, we think we need to make an e-bike."

[00:04:50]How How much time passes before you've got a first sample?

[00:04:55]First sample's a bit shorter. I think that Let's Let's back that up and say, when I hand off a brief to my engineering team to when I have a bike assembled in a box ready to ship on a container, 637 days. I like how specific you are with the number.

[00:05:12]How Is that the shortest you've done it, or is that the goal? That is the current benchmark we have in our planning software to hit based on every um, requirement and milestone.

[00:05:23]Planning software?

[00:05:25]That's, yeah. Okay. So, that will almost walk you through Yeah, so we So, we have a template, we hit the go button on it, and it it we makes some modifications to it based on kind of like some nuances, and then I can look at that and say, "All right, supplier C, I need this motor here for first samples cuz my bike's going to be ready, and then I need my frame here to be lab test on this date, and then we're in production on X date."

[00:05:46]And I kind of know Australian just then and I tell people what's going on.

[00:05:50]That's cool. Really cool. You have to be planning to that level. Yeah, sure.

[00:05:53]Otherwise it just just gets lost in the weeds or people don't hit deadline and then it just all gets delayed. So 637's the the point. Yeah, and so we're usually I'm usually juggling two or three projects at the same time and then also overlapping time years. You have to stack them. So you're doing 27 and 28.

[00:06:12]28 2029. So like it's it's fun. Wow, that is fun. That is cool. Okay, um I guess it's almost the perfect segue into this current state of e-bikes. Talked a little bit about it just before Matt V.

[00:06:23]But like what do Okay, from your perspective, what are you seeing with the Okay. Okay. Hey man, what an episode that was. You did amazing in it.

[00:06:35]>> And so did you. You shone like a star.

[00:06:37]You shone like a moon. Can we also put something up here that you can click on for the next episode?

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