The 130mm travel Focus Thron2 ebike is being heralded with the phrase “more than just trails”. With 750Wh battery capability, it certainly has the juice to get around.
Focus Thron2 nutshelled
- The pedal assist version of Focus’ do-it-all Thron design
- 130mm travel at both ends
- F.O.L.D. Gen 2 rear suspension design
- Bosch Performance CX Smart system
- 750Wh batteries (on all sizes apart from Small)
- 66° head angle
- 75° seat angle
- 470mm reach (Large)
- 455mm chain stay length
- Pricing: £4,199 to £5,599
We featured the analogue version of this 130mm travel bike – the Focus Thron – back in January. In its non-electric guise it wasn’t quite so much of a head scratcher. 130mm travel is fine and fun for a regular trail bike. But as anyone who’s spent time on an ebike, any ebike with modest amounts of travel is something of a quandry.
Not only is any of the potential weight savings of having lowish amounts of travel sort of irrelevant, there’s the fact that ebikes put a whole other level of demands into their suspension. It’s not just the argument that ‘all ebikes weigh a lot so you may as well have loads of travel’, it’s that the heft of ebikes seemingly necessitates longer travel anyway.
A mere 130mm of suspension travel is going to be potentially rather overworked on an ebike. Especially on that 34mm stanchion fork of the top-end Thron2 (we’d probably go for the cheaper models with the slightly fatter forks).
Anyhoo, we’ve not seen any of these bikes in the real world yet. Maybe the suspension has been tuned with this heavy-bike-modest-travel conundrum in mind. Or at the very least, comes with a bag full of volume spacers you can whang into the shock and fork.
Should that be the case, who knows? There might be a nice little niche worth exploiting here. After all, as anyone who’s spent time of older, longer travel ebikes will testify, the shifting weight balance and pitching about fore-aft of ill-damped long travel ebikes can be a whole other set of handling problems.
A well-executed shorter travel ebike with decent geometry is almost certainly a better experience than a long travel ebike that sinks, pitches and wallows all over the show. And despite the Spock-logical argument that the best solution is a well executed long travel ebike, there will always be people who like to do more with less (*puts hand up*).
Focus Thron2 EQP
There’s also a EQP version featuring mudguards, lights, rear rack kickstand and different build spec. Price range is £4,199 to £5,099.
“The THRON2 6.8 EQP is made to explore. Our fully-equipped EQP models come with perfectly matching fenders, rack, stand and lighting system. From bikepacking to trail tours through alpine terrain and your daily commute: anything is possible with the THRON2. Furthermore, the latest Kiox 300 offers a bigger, easily readable display with a new remote and better ergonomics. Additionally, there are more fitness features and better connectivity to all your devices. You can use a USB C port on the top tube to plug in your smartphone or bike computer to navigate and charge at the same time.”