Fazua's motor helps keep weight competitive

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Pivot has been in the electric mountain bike game since 2017, when it launched the Shuttle. In 2022, it has joined the growing number of companies offering a lightweight, slightly lower-powered eMTB with the Shuttle SL.

The Shuttle SL delivers 132mm of DW-Link suspension at the rear, with either 140mm or 150mm-travel forks at the front. The carbon frame holds a Fazua Ride 60 motor, as well as a 430Wh battery.

The news of the Shuttle quickly follows the launch of Trek’s Fuel EXe, and bikes such as the Orbea Rise and Specialized’s SL versions of its numerous eMTB offerings.

Pivot decided it wanted to deviate from the script of most eMTB builders by offering a bike that, it says, focuses on the dynamic of trail riding, with low weight, refined suspension, crisp handling and claimed game-changing performance.

As such, at the top end of the build options, the Team WC model comes in below 16.5kg – very light for a bike of this type.

Pivot has turned to Fazua to power the Shuttle SL, with the brand’s Ride 60 motor providing the drive.

The motor is relatively compact, and weighs just under 2kg. It provides up to 60Nm of torque, 10Nm more than Trek’s motor, and the same as the tuned-down Shimano motor in the Orbea Rise.

It’s paired with a 430Wh battery, integrated (and non-removable) low down in the bike’s down tube. This is larger in capacity than the batteries found in the Trek, Orbea and Specialized bikes.

The motor effectively disengages from the cranks when it’s turned off, which Pivot and Fazua say makes for a resistance-free and silent non-assisted ride.

On the bar, Fazua’s Ring Control offers control of the ride mode and walk assist in a very compact package. It’s paired with the LED Hub built into the top tube of the bike, which displays the battery level and riding mode, while also communicating with your phone or GPS via an ANT+ interface and offering a USB-C charge port for electronic devices.

The system offers three riding modes (Breeze, River and Rocket), each of which can be customised with the Fazua app. The top-end Rocket mode even includes a Boost function, which’ll push out 450W of assistance, temporarily.

The Shuttle SL frame is built from a proprietary carbon fibre, though details of the material used are scarce.

As we see on all of Pivot’s full-suspension bikes, a DW-Link (named after the suspension engineer Dave Weagle) linkage is used to control the 132mm of travel. This is a virtual pivot-point design, where the front and rear triangles are linked by a pair of co-rotating linkages close to the main triangle of the frame.

Pivot says that the kinematics of the suspension (how the suspension works and feels) give plush compliance, efficient pedalling and plenty of pop. At the same time, there’s ample progression for control on bigger hits.

The DW-Link suspension is said to have ‘position sensitive anti-squat’, which ‘eliminates’ pedal bob during hard efforts. It is also designed to improve traction and shouldn’t sacrifice braking or suspension feel.

The shock sits vertically in the frame, which Pivot claims allows for a more compact frame design, while still allowing full-sized bottles and decent standover height.

Cables run internally, as you’d expect, while there’s built-in chainslap protection and armour for the down tube. The charge port for the battery sits low, on the side of the belly of the down tube.

The shape of the bike is decidedly modern, with fairly slack angles and longer reach and wheelbase for a bike with this level of travel.

There are two BB height options, a Low and a High, enabling you to alter the shape of the bike slightly. Low BB settings are presented below, but raising the BB adds 0.4 degrees to the head and seat angles and gives an extra 4mm reach.

Seat tube angles steepen with larger frames, while chainstay lengths also get longer on the bigger bikes. This is to better distribute a taller rider’s centre of mass between the wheels.

Four models will be available to buy. The highest-priced Team WC is decked out in lighter-weight components, achieving that sub-16.5kg claimed weight, and includes an ebike-ready Fox 34 fork. The other models gain a burlier Fox 36 fork.

Tom Marvin is a technical editor at BikeRadar.com and MBUK magazine. He has a particular focus on mountain bikes, but spends plenty of time on gravel bikes, too. Tom has written for BikeRadar, MBUK and Cycling Plus, and was previously technical editor of What Mountain Bike magazine. He is also a regular presenter on BikeRadar’s YouTube channel and the BikeRadar podcast. With more than twenty years of mountain biking experience, and nearly a decade of testing mountain and gravel bikes, Tom has ridden and tested thousands of bikes and products, from super-light XC race bikes through to the most powerful brakes on the market. Outside of testing bikes, Tom competes in a wide range of mountain bike races, from multi-day enduros through to 24-hour races in the depths of the Scottish winter – pushing bikes, components and his legs to their limits. He’s also worked out that shaving your legs saves 8 watts, while testing aerodynamics in a wind tunnel. When not riding he can be found at the climbing wall, in his garden or cooking up culinary delights.

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