Cotic Rocket: first ride review

“off topic but did I see you on TV last night @chiefgrooveguru ? Working in the ‘ugliest building in Brighton’ ?”

You did indeed. Working there whilst wondering if we’re suddenly going to have nowhere to work thanks to the council’s spectacularly inept mismanagement as a landlord…

Thought so 🙂  Situation didn’t sound great 🙁

Have a look at the work that goes into the custom made motor cradles… a hell of a lot lighter than any off the shelf forged cradle you’ll find on other steel ebikes (what few there are) but an awful lot of work… far more than the front triangles of the droplink frames (made by the same people):

As someone in UK manufacturing – that mount as nice as it is…….. Why didn’t you go for something simpler? There is a lot of (expensive) human welding time in that. Something smaller/simpler laser cut folded jig mounted plates that then accept machined aluminium ‘adaptors’ for a choice of motor or to allow future upgrades. No way as a small manufacturer would I tie myself or owners in with a single choice of (expensive) motor supplier.

I’m very much pro-UK manufacturing and very much liking this Rocket. I appreciate function and ease of maintenance over ‘fashion’ and I also appreciate when a lot of time and skill has gone into making something.

However my main concern with all e-bikes is what happens in five years when the motor is dead and there have been two new versions since then, neither of which will fit into your frame? Can someone enlighten me as to whether this is the case? Be a shame to sling an entire frame into landfill because there’s no mounting standard for motors. If I were to find £10,000 to buy a Rocket (and I’d love to) then it’d have to see me out until I can’t ride any more!

Cy, if you read this then congratulations on doing something different and doing it right. The bike looks fantastic and I’m sure will ride fantastic too ?

You don’t need everyone to like something, you only need enough people.

i’m not after an e-bike at the moment, or another regular bike for that matter. But if I was, I might try to find a way to afford this..!

On looks, the fact that most people say it’s important doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the most important thing to them and also doesn’t mean they won’t like the look of a given bike that others don’t. I often start to like the look of a bike more when I find the form is due to proveable or feelable function.

Congratulations to Cy and the Cotic crew for bringing this project home.

I can only hope it is successful. With that price tag it is truly a boutique product. And I suppose there will be enough buyers to whom that aspect will be appealing enough to justify the purchase.

I applaud Cotic for staying true to their unique selling points and delivering something different a hopefully better than the mainstream.

I can only hope this product is successful enough to justify larger scale, cheaper manufacturing and we’ll see a cheaper option down the line.

One I can afford/justify more easily.

“However my main concern with all e-bikes is what happens in five years when the motor is dead and there have been two new versions since then, neither of which will fit into your frame? Can someone enlighten me as to whether this is the case?”

It’s not something I can recall hearing of, so it can’t be a frequent occurrence. There are service centres who can rebuild motors and it seems like they’re no less reliable or more expensive than decent forks or shocks.

The bigger issue has tended to be control electronics and particularly poor sealing against moisture ingress. Anecdotally though, there are an awful lot more e-bikes around than a few years ago and there seem to be fewer posts about “my ebike has died because I jetwashed it …” so maybe the manufacturers have got better at this (or owners have stopped jetwashing them)?

The descent of mountain biking into a ‘sport’ of fat blokes riding motorbikes continues. I’m out 🙁

Motorbikes are cheaper

And yet most folk i see on ebikes aren’t fat…

I’m a bit overweight and spend most of my time on a regular bike.

Only 8.3% of the 13,000 people who responded to Pinkbike’s survey said looks weren’t important when buying a bike. Wiping out over 90% of your customers doesn’t sound like great business to me.

Find your niche and build it, find your following and build it  – sounds like good business to me if you’re not aiming at megacorp status. 8.3% of the total market is great for a small brand when every other brand is chasing that 91.7% who buy on looks, fashion etc.

And just look at those raw motor cradle pics .. that’s premium custom frame building level of work. The only think that isn’t quite right in the end result (for me) is the battery casing styling and far dues to Cotic for doing it anyway, that may change in future. The entire industry needs a bigger dose of function over form and I’ve all the time in the world for brands who work that way.