ARCC Brompton T-Line

Reviewer:

 Paul Wrighton

Purchased From:

 ARCC -

Purchase Price:

 £7,419 (with all optional extras)

Time Owned:

 1 week

Local Terrain:

 Moderate hills, urban

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Strengths:

 Extremely light weight (11-13 Kg) - items like brooks saddle, lights, spare battery pack will take weight up to 13).

Use of 36V Bosch power tool packs, so batteries readily available.

Brompton fold, can take bike almost anywhere with no need to lock.

Bespoke engineered e-bike conversion which includes a 3 second "launch mode" boost, "Hill detection", manual/auto modes for assistance, the ability to run either with an app and phone on bars or a small dongle or simply with remembered settings from their proprietary "pod" controller.

British company and all British construction. Taking a test ride on gets to see just how all the components are designed and manufactured on site - it's impressive.

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Weaknesses:

 It seems only 6Ah and 4Ah Bosch power packs are available. So even with the spare battery holder option maximum Battery is 12Ah.

There is moderate noise from the front hub motor, but personally I find this OK.

Stiff ride - in large part down to 16" wheels at high pressure. This can be improved somewhat with brooks B17 saddle option (at cost of some wight gain).

Some will find price prohibitive - cheaper models are available, this is the very top of the line.

As when and if I find any more issues over time I will edit them in here. 

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Summary:

 I should mention that I have owned four other Ebikes before this one, one kit, on KTM Emtb, and two Gocycles (G3 and 4).

Although Gocycles are very well designed and marketed the company has now become and American one and it remains to be seen how the G5 (due for release this summer) will go.

I am mentioning this because in general terms the ARCC Brompton conversion is extremely competitive with Gocycles. The fold/unfold time is slightly longer but the resulting folded bike is far more compact and manageable then the Gocycle -- being lighter helps a lot.

Riding the ARCC is very pleasant, there are six assistance levels and the app will advise ranges for each according to battery state. I especially like that the system can be turned on by touching a magnetic fob to the pod mounted on front forks and you're ready to ride. Or, if you want bells a whistles with speedometer, cadence, distance (other options like calories can be configured) then you can run with the app on your phone.

 Being a Brompton conversion means all the bespoke mods or accessories out there for a Brompton can likely be used for this bike too. The pod has a couple of terminal pairs for lighting, so that can be made integral. Sadly ARCC do not offer this themselves. The pod also has two USB sockets.

 I will add to this after I've taken the bike back to ARCC for the "free" eight week service.

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Overall Rating (out of 10) :

9.5

Edited yesterday at 07:481 day by mainframeguy