2023 Trek Fx+ and Dual Sport+

R

Richard Stallard

Active Member
Region
Australia
Trek Australia are advertising the Dual Sport+ 2023 model ebike which is a new lightweight (17 kg) model with rigid forks and rear hub drive. It looks like it would suit many riders although the range would be limiting for some. I haven’t seen any reviews of this model. I wonder how the rear hub drive would cope with hills compared to mid-drive models. The Fx+ looks very similar but comes with rack and mudguards.

The Dual Sport+ is your lightweight, go anywhere e-bike - Trek Bikes (AU)

The Dual Sport+ is a versatile, multi-surface, lightweight hybrid e-bike designed to let you roam wherever you want in total comfort. Shop online and in-store!
www.trekbikes.com www.trekbikes.com
 
its not going to be a hill climber for sure and the batteries would be too small for that job. it may have torque sensing since it says its smooth power.
 
Richard Stallard said:
Trek Australia are advertising the Dual Sport+ 2023 model ebike which is a new lightweight (17 kg) model with rigid forks and rear hub drive. It looks like it would suit many riders although the range would be limiting for some. I haven’t seen any reviews of this model. I wonder how the rear hub drive would cope with hills compared to mid-drive models. The Fx+ looks very similar but comes with rack and mudguards.

The Dual Sport+ is your lightweight, go anywhere e-bike - Trek Bikes (AU)

The Dual Sport+ is a versatile, multi-surface, lightweight hybrid e-bike designed to let you roam wherever you want in total comfort. Shop online and in-store!
www.trekbikes.com www.trekbikes.com
Click to expand...
Uh. Even not the Mahle X35.
I even do not risk taking my low power Specialized Vado SL into the mountains...
 
After delving a bit deeper on the Trek website, I discovered that the Dual Sport+ and similar FX+ have drive systems made by Hyena in Taiwan. I haven’t been able to find any reviews of the Hyena rear hub drive systems. There is some general info at https://www.ebike24.com/blog/ebike-drive-hyena. The Trek bikes do incorporate a torque sensor in the bottom bracket so they potentially offer a better riding experience than rear hub systems without a torque sensor. My local Trek store has some bikes in stock so I might have a look sometime although I am not considering a purchase of another bike.
 
Looks like an attempt by Trek to keep the weight and price to a minimum. For example, it looks like no display. Might not be a bad deal.
 
Well, we took the plunge and bought an Fx+2 this afternoon for my wife, as a lighter alternative to the Verve+2. Surprisingly, we havn’t found any reviews of the new lightweight Treks online.

First impressions are good. We did a 5 km test ride, with me on my specialised Vado SL, and the boost level from the Hyena rear hub drive seemed substantially greater than the Bosch Active Line mid drive on the Verve. The test ride included short grades of 5-7% which the bike handled easily.
D19F3A6F-6A0E-4950-8E48-CB06314BEDBE.jpeg
A compromise of the lightweight design is the onboard battery is only 240 Wh with a claimed range of 55 km. This range should be enough for our current level of riding. My wife envisages she will be able to ride some of the time with zero boost which will help conserve battery life for when it is needed. A range extender of similar capacity is available if the battery capacity proves to be insufficient.

Wheel removal will be interesting as we want to be equipped to repair punctures on the road and plan to swap the tubes to Presta valve type before tackling rides far from home. The rear hub has Hex head bolts either side, with bushes to match the thru holes in the frame. These bolts require a 5 mm hex key. Prior to wheel removal, a plug and socket must be disconnected just in front of the hub motor and a bolt removed which clamps the motor cable to the frame. A bit more complicated than we are used to.

The front hub is described as QR but it appears to have a skewer with a hex socket and bushed to fit the thru hole forks.
 
That range seems really short, but I wonder what conditions it's based on. That is, would this be riding in the Eco-type mode, or with a medium level of assistance? As we all know, this makes a huge amount of difference on an e-bike (and any EV for that matter). My wife can do far better than the advertised rating on her Verve+ when riding in Eco on our flat terrain, but of course going into Touring or Sport brings the range down quite a bit. Maybe 35 miles is a very conservative estimate?

In any case, the look like nice bikes at a very competitive price (especially with the Trek name on them).
 
i like the balance of weight, power, range on bikes like this. more than enough for most (obviosuly not all) functional/casual purposes. might take one for a test ride to see if it could replace my current commute/utility bike.
 
rochrunner said:
That range seems really short, but I wonder what conditions it's based on. That is, would this be riding in the Eco-type mode, or with a medium level of assistance? As we all know, this makes a huge amount of difference on an e-bike (and any EV for that matter). My wife can do far better than the advertised rating on her Verve+ when riding in Eco on our flat terrain, but of course going into Touring or Sport brings the range down quite a bit. Maybe 35 miles is a very conservative estimate?

In any case, the look like nice bikes at a very competitive price (especially with the Trek name on them).
Click to expand...
The battery is 250 Wh, which is smaller than many comparable bikes (400 Wh for the Verve+). The relatively small capacity obviously minimises the weight, cost and bulk of the battery.

My wife has ridden 35 km so far on her Fx+ and has used about 50% of the battery, although it is impossible to be more precise as the display only indicates 5 bars for battery life not the actual percentage. We recharged the battery after yesterday’s ride in anticipation of a longer ride, weather permitting (winter here).

Our local Trek dealer quoted AU$700 for the range extender, which is not bad considering it is the same 250 Wh capacity as the inbuilt battery. We doubt whether the range extender will be needed for our current riding activity, so we haven’t ordered one.

We swapped the tubes for ones with Presta valves and, in doing so, realised we need to add a long arm 5 mm Allen key (or similar) to our on-road tool kit as both wheels are secured by high-torqued hex head bolts.
 
Richard Stallard said:
The battery is 250 Wh, which is smaller than many comparable bikes (400 Wh for the Verve+). The relatively small capacity obviously minimises the weight, cost and bulk of the battery.
Click to expand...
Vado SL battery is 320 Wh, and the motor is a mid-drive. Vado SL 5.0 non-EQ weighs 15 kg, and Vado SL 4.0 EQ is 17 kg. A 160 Wh SL Range Extender weighs 1 kg, and the SL Cable is 100 g. I think only an uninformed person would buy the new Trek e-bike, especially as Trek even does not mention the motor brand.
 
Stefan Mikes said:
Vado SL battery is 320 Wh, and the motor is a mid-drive. Vado SL 5.0 non-EQ weighs 15 kg, and Vado SL 4.0 EQ is 17 kg. A 160 Wh SL Range Extender weighs 1 kg, and the SL Cable is 100 g. I think only an uninformed person would buy the new Trek e-bike, especially as Trek even does not mention the motor brand.
Click to expand...
Hi Stefan. Well, I bought one after researching the motor manufacturer (Hyena, Taiwan) and reading reviews of some other bikes equipped with Hyena drives. I don’t see the relevance of the figures you quote for Specialised bikes. In fact, we had a Specialised Vado SL 5.0 EQ on order for months for my wife (to match my Vado SL 4.0) but cancelled the order as none were available in Australia and several promised delivery dates came and went.

I am an Electronic Engineer and part of the reason for getting an e-bike was to explore the technology, so it is useful to be able to compare the different bikes, hub drive vs. mid drive, for instance, when riding together. I was reluctant to buy a rear hub drive bike as all the ones that I looked at did not have a torque sensor so the motor boost was pretty much on/off and not based on the rider’s effort. The Hyena drive does have a torque sensor in the bottom bracket so it looked like it would deliver a smooth and proportional boost. My other concern with rear hub drive was that it would have less effective torque on grades, but then I released that the gear ratio for a typical 1x bike is always greater than 1:1, so a rear hub motor could deliver the same assistance as a mid-drive assuming both motors had the same torque. So far, the Fx+ with Hyena drive has performed very well on modest grades of up to 7%, bearing in mind we don’t have any high mountains nearby anyway.
 
I have been for a couple of short rides on my wife’s Trek Fx+ and I think I am starting to understand more how it works. It seems the torque sensor controls the motor assist by on/off switching rather than varying the assist in proportion to the rider’s effort. In effect, the bike behaves more like one with just a cadence sensor, in that you only have to turn the pedals and apply gentle force in order to get relatively strong boost, based on the selected assist level (1-3).

There is a delay of about half a pedal rotation before the assist commences, and a delay of a second or two when you stop pedalling before the motor assist fades. The assist builds and fades fairly quickly but smoothly.

The overall conclusion is that the motor assist is not as natural as either the Specialised Vado SL or the Trek Verve+ 2. Nevertheless, my wife prefers the Fx+ over the Verve due to its lighter weight.
 
Stefan Mikes said:
Vado SL battery is 320 Wh, and the motor is a mid-drive. Vado SL 5.0 non-EQ weighs 15 kg, and Vado SL 4.0 EQ is 17 kg. A 160 Wh SL Range Extender weighs 1 kg, and the SL Cable is 100 g. I think only an uninformed person would buy the new Trek e-bike, especially as Trek even does not mention the motor brand.
Click to expand...
Bear in mind it's nearly half the price of a Vado SL 4 here in Australia, Stefan.

I scratched my head at first too when I saw the email from Trek. But there's very few other options around that price locally. Perhaps the Lekker Amsterdam... can't think of much else.

There's a niche for lightweight, relatively affordble commuter bikes that the Trek neatly fills. I see the Fx selling in reasonable numbers. It won't set the world on fire - climate change is seeing to that - but it will fill a market void.

Glad to hear the motor has omph enough. Toughen up those tyres and you shouldn't have to drop the rear wheel for repairs much. You'll get top notch support with Trek Australia too.
 
pmcdonald said:
Bear in mind it's nearly half the price of a Vado SL 4 here in Australia, Stefan.

I scratched my head at first too when I saw the email from Trek. But there's very few other options around that price locally. Perhaps the Lekker Amsterdam... can't think of much else.

There's a niche for lightweight, relatively affordble commuter bikes that the Trek neatly fills. I see the Fx selling in reasonable numbers. It won't set the world on fire - climate change is seeing to that - but it will fill a market void.

Glad to hear the motor has omph enough. Toughen up those tyres and you shouldn't have to drop the rear wheel for repairs much. You'll get top notch support with Trek Australia too.
Click to expand...
Getting the back wheel out isn’t too bad. There is a compact round connector for the motor wiring. Contrary to the service manual, the part of the cable attached to the motor came secured by a cable tie which should be snipped in advance to facilitate on-road repairs. I just received a long arm 5 mm Allen key which I ordered from eBay and have added that to my on-road toolkit ready to remove the two bolts securing the rear axle, as well as the long bolt through the front hub (which is about half the diameter of a typical through axle). At first attempt to reassemble the rear wheel, I didn’t plug the motor connector in fully, and the LEDs on the handlebar controller flashed to indicate a problem. Easily fixed.
 
Richard Stallard said:
I wonder if Trek are selling them in Australia to test the market and the bikes, before releasing them in other countries?
Click to expand...
Richard: Be reasonable. Please name the leading e-bike market (outside China). The name starts with Eu... :D You Australians are lucky to be getting the same e-bikes as we here, only with the British layout of brakes.

1658831250706.png

The price is in PLN, Polish Zloty.

1658831500032.png

This e-bike is 17 000 PLN. Anything above 10,000 zloty is believed to be expensive by most of Poles.
 
Stefan. The reason for my question is that I have been surprised that no-one else on the forum appears to have taken delivery of one of the new Trek bikes. It is relatively common for multinational companies to test a new product in a small country/area prior to wider release.

The Australian pricing is AU$3,500 for the Trek Fx+ and AU$6,000 for the Vado SL 4.0 EQ, so the Trek is relatively cheaper than the Vado SL (58% in Australia vs 69% in Poland.). The non-EQ Vado SL in not available in Australia.
 
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