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The New Intense Tazer Is Nothing Like The Old One!

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Cast your mind back to last week, and you may remember our post about Intense boss Jeff Steber and his prototype e-Bike project. Well, it appears that it has come along quite a bit from the alloy mule we reported on.

Again Steber has taken to his personal Instagram account to post teasers of his latest project, but the bike obscured in the images is a full carbon bike that may be closer to production that we had first thought.

As we all know, building a bike from carbon isn’t a cheap job and a company needs to invest in moulds, plus research correct carbon layup, so to see Intense’s e-MTB in carbon is a pretty big deal.

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One last day out on the trails @mammothmountain on the TAZER prototype @intensecycles stay tuned for more info as it progress, I must admit the most fun I have had on two wheels in awhile #noshuttlerequired #tazer @jeffsteber @steber_guitars

A post shared by Jeff Steber (@jeffsteber) on Jun 17, 2018 at 3:42pm PDT

On top of the obvious expense that has gone into the bike, it appears that a colour scheme and graphics have been chosen for the bike along with a new, not new name.

Out on the trails @mammothmountain @intensecycles on route to @mammothmotocross ran into some old friends there @palmer555 @sleetdawg , took mammoth rock trail from Juniper all the way to track so much fun #noshuttlerequired #tazer @intensecycles

A post shared by Jeff Steber (@jeffsteber) on Jun 16, 2018 at 1:41pm PDT

In our last Intense e-Bike post we had a couple of shots at naming the battery-powered bike but off the bat we discounted the Tazer name, how wrong we were.

One of the original Intense Tracer Dual Slalom frames.
One of the original Intense Tazer Dual Slalom frames.

The original Intense Tazer was an alloy hardtail designed for snappy acceleration and was quite popular back in the day  (there was also a full-suspension version too). The new one? Well, it’s this carbon fibre full-suspension e-MTB that you see before you here.

While Jeff Steber is comfortable posting partial photos of the Prototype Intense Tazer e-MTB on this social media accounts, there aren’t really any official details, but we think we can spot a few things from the images alone.

Here @mammothmountain test riding some prototypes, some sneak peeks , stay tuned for more visuals as we get closer to production @intensecycles #noshuttlerequired

A post shared by Jeff Steber (@jeffsteber) on Jun 15, 2018 at 10:49pm PDT

First of all, it appears that the battery is now once again located inside the large downtube. We had seen in the previous leaks that a battery position both above and below the downtube has been tested, but it looks as though beneath has been chosen. We can guess that this is to improve the centre of gravity and will allow the Tazer to handle similarly to its non-motorised cousins.

We can also see from the images that the Intense Tazer has room for a bottle in the mainframe. Knowing that Jeff is quite a tall guy we can assume that he is riding a larger frame, so bottle mounting might be tight on smaller frames. Also, that triangle under the top tube – where it kind of looks like there’s a missing ‘N’ from ‘Intense’ – that looks like it could be perfectly suited to a neat storage pod or frame bag…maybe with that missing ‘N’ branded on to it. Now wouldn’t that be neat?

We can’t see much more other that the build kit of this Tazer includes Rental bars, a Fabric seat, DT Swiss wheels and Shimano’s STEP’s e-MTB motor system.

So there we have it. Intense will introduce the Intense Tazer full-suspension e-Bike at some point in the future, but we’re left wondering about cost and if will be as keenly priced as the current range of Intense bikes? And finally is this the point that we begin to see more boutique bike brands jump on the e-MTB bandwagon? How long will it be before we see the first Yeti or Santa Cruz e-Bike?

Andi is a gadget guru and mountain biker who has lived and ridden bikes in China and Spain before settling down in the Peak District to become Singletrack's social media expert. He is definitely more big travel fun than XC sufferer but his bike collection does include some rare hardtails - He's a collector and curator as well as a rider. Theory and practice in perfect balance with his inner chi, or something. As well as living life based on what he last read in a fortune cookie Andi likes nothing better than riding big travel bikes.

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