DISRUPTORS FROM DOWN UNDER
SPOKE talks to Velduro Bikes about developing the DJI-powered Rogue, why they’re offering a frame-only option, and how they’re beating the big players on price
Words Justin Henehan
Images Supplied
Velduro Bikes wants to cause a ruckus in the bike industry. Kiwi founded, Kiwi led, Kiwi developed, Kiwi tested—Velduro Bikes wants to be a mountain bike company for the people, by the people. It’s not one of those top-down multi-national corporations with fancy offices in Europe, just three dudes from down under, two in New Zealand and one in China, who want to build a great bike at a fair price.
The strategy is as grassroots as you can get when it comes to electric mountain bikes—design a great chassis around the best motor on the market, give it to some locals to thrash about, then offer it as a frame only at a price that the big companies can’t beat.
Given the hyper-local focus, their first foray on the world stage must have felt a world away from Whakarewarewa Forest. Showing up at China Cycle 25 in Shanghai, they didn’t expect their DJI-powered Phantom gravel bike to win the Gold Award for Creative Product; nor did they expect the mountain bike world to lose its mind over a 3D-printed mock-up of their forthcoming Rogue eMTB. Since then, they’ve been overwhelmed by calls from excited media outlets and frothing punters who all want a piece of a bike that has the potential to unsettle the mountain bike world.
I felt like I was chatting with someone I’d known a long time when I sat down to a video call with Dan Wallace from Velduro Bikes. We’d already had a few in-depth phone conversations, including one while I was bumbling my way around a local supermarket (I ended up going home with some groceries that were definitely not on my shopping list). Enthusiastic people are engaging like that—he’s a guy who lives and breathes this stuff, and he’s not afraid to speak his mind.
While we waited for Anthony Clyde, the other of the NZ-based Velduro trio, Dan got things rolling by telling me about how the Papamoa-based company formed. Dan is a co-founder of the Wheel Deal, which works with employers to help workers purchase e-bikes for commuting. He’s also the owner of Electrify NZ, an e-bike retail store in the Bay of Plenty. Anthony founded UBCO, a company that produced a kind of utilitarian electric motorbike, and before that, Smartmotion, which produces a range of commuter e-bikes. He currently runs a start-up called Amplify, which works on high-power hub-driven motors. It’s fair to say both Dan and Anthony have extensive experience in the e-bike world.
A year ago, neither had been thinking about bringing an eMTB to market, let alone one that would pique the interest of mountain bikers globally. Anthony had sold Smartmotion and Dan was busy with his retail business. They’d been chatting about starting a New Zealand-based electric transportation company for about a year and had been distributing Vallkree electric cruisers in New Zealand with the idea to create their own, but that hadn’t got beyond the planning phase.
Then Dick Lai, a long-time business partner in China, got in touch.
“Essentially what happened was Dick, who had already had a 15-year working relationship with Anthony on the China side, said, ‘Listen, I’ve got an opportunity with DJI, and I’d like to create a new brand with you guys’,” Dan explains.
They’d been following the waves DJI had been making with their drive system on the Amflow eMTB and knew it was too good an opportunity to miss. It was enough to bring Anthony out of e-bike retirement. Dick, Dan and Anthony formed a business partnership and Velduro (a combination of Velo and Enduro) was born.
In 24 months, DJI has lit up the cycling world, but shouldn’t surprise anyone. Founded in 2006 as a manufacturer of drones and camera systems, DJI now accounts for 90 per cent of the world’s consumer drone market. Turning that manufacturing and innovation prowess to bicycle motors was always going to be an intriguing prospect.
It definitely helped that the company founder was a keen mountain biker, Dan says.
“He was riding bikes with other brands’ motors and felt that, given DJI’s experience with high power, high RPM drones, he could build something really competitive.”
Since the launch of their Avinox M1 drive system, it’s easy to argue they’ve achieved that goal. The motor’s latest 1.2 firmware update boosts the motor output to between 70NM and 120NM of torque at up to 1000W (Auto, Trail, and Boost modes) from a unit that weighs just 2.52kg. That’s 30NM more torque and double the support of its nearest competitors, but at 200g to 400g lighter than its rivals. Its batteries are also light: the 800WH option coming in at 3.74kg and the 600WH version at 2.87kg.
Despite the recent headlines around attempts to regulate e-bike power, Dan says raw power was never DJI’s focus. There are already plenty of very powerful motors already on the market, he points out.
“The Bafang motors are super powerful, Rocky Mountain’s motors develop 120NM, so it’s no just about power, it’s how the power relates to the rider experience, how you can customise it to them.”
DJI’s philosophy is more holistic, he says. Where DJI really wants to excel is software and programming.
For its Avinox motor, DJI brought its market-leading drone experience to an app that they say is both intuitive and informative, allowing users to easily manipulate starting power, pedal sensitivity, torque, overrun, and a host of other features.
Its a motor that can be tuned to behave however you want, even to mimic the feel of competitor’s units.
“At the moment, DJI are the world leader in mid-drive motors. I think it’s great for the overall industry because it will force everyone to lift their game fast,” Anthony says.
“I think it’s great for the overall industry because it will force everyone to lift their game fast.“
Anthony Clyde
For Anthony and Dan, there were three non-negotiables if they were going to do this: first, everything had to be DJI; second, the frame had to be of the highest quality; and third, everything had to be in close collaboration with riders and the bike industry.
They also decided early on that they wanted Kiwi riders to be prioritised.
“New Zealand has some of the top riders and top trails in the world, but we’re often forgotten about,” Dan explains. “And, even when you get a really good product, the allocation of product New Zealand’s given can be very limited and the pricing is often dictated.”
With DJI, they saw a chance to create something that was Kiwi-led; a chance to put their prototype under local shredders for testing on the sorts of trails that consistently turn out world-beating talent. But it was also a chance to prioritise New Zealand mountain bikers, to put them at the head of the queue for the first batch of frames.
When it came to the frame, Dan and Anthony wanted a versatile bike that could be ridden anywhere. The Rogue has been designed as a 170mm travel all-mountain/enduro frame that can be run with 29-inch or mixed wheels and in two different progression settings.
Anthony admits he was a sceptic when high-pivot analogue bikes first hit the mainstream, but years of user experience and refinement have shown they can work for both riders and manufacturers, he says. Less common, however, was the platform’s use on eMTBs—only Trek, Pyga, Norco, and Forbidden have so far attempted to pair a motor with an idler.
Linking up with I-track inventor Hugh McLeay was key, Anthony says. I-track is a high or mid-pivot linkage design where the idler is attached to a swing-arm member rather than the main frame. It’s a design that allows for high levels of control over anti-squat (pedal feel) while minimising pedal kickback. Paired with a four-bar linkage, it lends itself to a predictable axle path and leverage curve. The higher main pivot also makes the chassis more stable under braking. The design has been adopted by top brands like Norco, Trek, and Intense at the highest levels of racing.
Velduro has provided Spoke with kinematic graphs that give some insight into how it’ll ride. Depending on wheel size, the Rogue’s axle path moves rearward a moderate 10mm to 14.75mm through its maximum 172mm of travel. It has relatively high levels of anti-squat—above 100 per cent for the first 100mm of travel—suggesting a firm feel under power. The leverage ratio is slightly progressive, pedal kick-back has been minimised in descending gears, and anti-rise sits at about 100 per cent at sag, which should add up to a smooth, predictable, stable descender.
Beyond the benefits of a rearward axle path and a more stable chassis, there are some specific design advantages to using mid/high-pivot idler-driven designs for e-bikes, Anthony says.
“One of the biggest advantages with the mid pivot is packaging—you can get the motor in with a decent length shock and space for a water bottle. We also get a nice straight seat tube because the wheel path is up and slightly away.”
Another part of the puzzle was frame manufacturing. Here’s where Anthony’s experience with Smartmotion and UBCO came to the fore. His relationship with Dick Lai and other contacts he’d made in China through those brands meant they had access to top-quality manufacturers.
“The Carbon frame factory we’re using is in the top three in the world. They do some huge, huge brands,” Dan explains.
“There’s no f***ing way I’m having a sub substandard frame factory produce a bike for New Zealand buyers. You know, it’s not happening.”
They’re clear-eyed about the fact that working across geographical and cultural barriers can, at times, be challenging, but the design and manufacturing team in China have been happy to make changes, both in the development and testing phases.
“We’ve created an opportunity for Kiwi riders to have a real input into the design.“
Dan Wallace
There just are a lot of moving parts in the process, Anthony says.
“We wanted to be really open that the Rogue was a work in progress, but we’re gonna thrash the s*** out of it when it comes here and find out if there are any issues.”
“The way most companies work, they don’t allow riders to have an influence,” Dan says. “Because of who we are, we’ve created an opportunity for Kiwi riders to have a real input into the design.”
They’ll soon have test bikes out in the community under Kiwi riders, including Spoke owner Neil Kerr. Those riders will then report back to Velduro and anything from tweaks to geometry to kinematics changes will be considered before the final production frame is signed off.
The decision to offer a frame only option has been met with a lot of enthusiasm from mountain bikers across the globe.
Anthony says they really wanted more freedom for riders to customise their ride, to be able to bring parts across from other builds, and to make a high-performance eMTB more accessible for the riding community.
Ultimately, they want the Rogue to be a bike for the people by the people—a bike built through a process of collaboration from the design phase, to testing, to when a customer rolls out their front door and into the trails.
“I’m interested what in the New Zealand rider community does with it,” Anthony says. “We’re not just going to dictate what this bike is and how it’s built.”
“We want riders to be able to buy a high-performance bike at a reasonable price and have the freedom to build it how they like, with their favourite parts, to fit their needs,” Dan says.
As part of that spirit of collaboration, Dan and Anthony hope to create a hybrid model for sales and distribution that enables riders who’re confident on the tools to build their own bikes but also allows retailers and mechanics to work with customers on setting up and dialing in their complete bikes or frame-up builds. The plan is to have select retailers and dealers available to support riders and answer questions.
“We want to have people that are not just mechanically amazing, but also understand the tech that DJI has, because the software is going to blow people’s mind. So, we want to have people that embrace that as well, because customising your riding modes is just as important as the components you choose.”
That ecosystem of support is a vital part of getting the most out of the bike, Dan says, as well as building a community of riders. And that network of support and collaboration extends to warranty and mechanical support, something DJI has stringent requirements around, Dan says.
“Any brand that carries DJI and needs to get DJI’s authorisation to enter any new territory and DJI will make sure that they’ve implemented their aftersales structure in various countries to country.”
Dan says he was candid with DJI that the standard Bosch has set for rider support is the minimum expected by the market. DJI’s warranty rate is “mind-blowingly” small though, he adds.
“Ultimately, my hope is that there will be a centralised warranty team, same as Bosch. In the meantime, if you have an issue with anything DJI related on a Velduro bike, Velduro will look after you,” he says.
Possibly the biggest element to the Rogue’s industry-disruption will be pricing. It’s something Dan is passionate about, and he doesn’t hold back.
“I think the bike world has got out of control—you’re paying $25,000 for a bike and you can go down the road and buy a good car or motorbike for the same money.”
They hope to offer the Rogue carbon frame only with the DJI Avinox motor and 800WH battery at about NZ$8000. Prices for complete bikes will be dependent on component prices and which ala carte build customers chose, but Dan says the cost of a high-spec build with Sram components and Fox suspension will be in the ballpark of NZ$16,000.
When asked how they’re doing it, Dan was adamant that it’s not through skimping on quality or components.
“What we’re skimping on is our margins is as the company owners and directors.”
“Any disruption Velduro creates in the industry will be as a result of consumer choices.“
Dan Wallace
Velduro recently partnered with Giant International to assemble the frames, leveraging their quality-control resources and giving them the ability to upscale quickly.
The Giant deal also comes with access to DT Swiss components and the ability to run their wheels on the Rogue complete bikes, a cost saving Dan says will be passed on to riders.
His hope is that, through its pricing, Velduro can put pressure on other companies to trim their margins and eventually that’ll lead to a better deal for consumers.
“There’s always a premium placed on an established brand name, but is it 40 per cent? I’d argue it’s not.”
“To be honest, if we can keep our price point low, people will buy the product, love the product, and instead of putting that money into big buildings, we can use it to help get Velduro riders on the global stage. To us, that’s a better of use of our money.
“I do think there is a change coming. We’re not interested in restricting performance to only the wealthiest riders. Any disruption Velduro creates in the industry will be as a result of consumer choices. We don’t want to disrupt it by telling people what is good or what is bad.”
Again and again, Dan and Anthony stressed that they’re a small operation with big ambitions and that, despite the frenzy around the 3D-printed Rogue mockup in Shanghai, bringing an eMTB to market will take time.
The first run of frames will be limited, they say—300 units of both their Rogue eMTB and Phantom gravel frame. They hope to have the full range of sizes and complete bikes available towards the end of 2025. Enquiries for presales are open now and Dan and Anthony recommend getting in touch soon, given the level of interest.
Once production is underway, turnaround from the factory will be quick, they say.
“As we move into the southern summer and everything’s in full production, then we can just go order after order after order after order, because you can land things within eight weeks.”
It’s been an intense project for the two Kiwis from the Bay, but what’s kept them going is the prospect of doing something truly unique in the bicycle industry.
“It’s a bike for the people,” Dan enthuses, “a kind of user-driven revolution, and we think even DJI don’t understand how big this is.”
Spoke will be part of the Rogue testing and development and we’ll be documenting the process with a full review.
Head to the Velduro Bikes website or their Instagram for the latest updates.