While the e-bike polarises debate in mountain biking, a single visit to a UK trail centre riding one and you’ll never go back to the pedal and push life. However, with road bikes, there hasn’t really been an e-bike system available that doesn’t just result in a heavy bike when it’s not being useful in e-bike mode, slowing the adoption by ‘real road riders’ as a result.
It’s the hardware that’s really the problem here, given that when you hit the limit, the motor stops assisting, and when not working for you, it essentially works against you. You can feel both the excess weight in the system, and resistance from the system itself, defeating the object somewhat.
(Image credit: Future / Andy Carr)
Bizarrely, the lower powered system from TQ featured here in what otherwise, looks like a pretty standard Canyon Endurace, promises to deliver a push when you need it, but less drag when you don’t. The marketing material refers to it as a ‘tail wind’ system rather than a driving motor that takes over, and that’s exactly what e-bikes promised roadies all those years ago, but failed to truly deliver. If the Canyon Endurance with TQ system on board rights those wrongs, it could be that the road e-bike has finally come of age.
Design
Canyon’s Endurace is somewhat of a people’s champion in the world of road bikes. It’s reasonably priced, handles well, is designed with a stack and reach that’s sensible for most of us, and it’s actually comfortable.
An e-bike version that takes those characteristics, and adds 200w of power, but doesn’t look like an e-bike or hinder you in any way, is pretty compelling then.
The version I tested is £6499 with the excellent Shimano Ultegra Di2 groupset, is largely as expected in terms of spec, except for a sprinkling of supplements, the most obvious being the Praxis chainset. For me, Praxis makes a very decent chainset, so whilst this is likely an economic move on Canyon’s part, it looks smart and certainly won’t detract from the smooth and reliable shifting you’d expect from Shimano at this lofty level in the range.
(Image credit: Future / Andy Carr)
Specification
Still, this isn’t cheap for an Ultegra equipped bike, but the motor and remaining specification starts to look like good value when you start totting it up. The full spec is actually pretty impressive, in that you get a proper deep section DT Swiss ERC 1400’s in 45m depth. Shod with Schwalbe’s excellent Pro One TLE, in 32mm. There’s room for 35mm if you want to go wider.
The wheels on my bike were subject to the widely published DT Swiss recall. I took my chances for the purposes of the review, and experienced no problems. I’ve made no secret that I’m a big fan of DTSwiss products, and despite a niggling doubt that the front or rear might explode at any minute, I had absolutely no problems with them during the test period.
(Image credit: Future / Andy Carr)
The bike comes with Canyon’s own integrated bar and stem and a Canyon S15 VCLS 2.0 CF seat pin in 27.2mm diameter, which flexes up to 20mm, to give added vertical compliance and an integrated front and rear lighting system. The latter is neatly integrated into the seat stays, while the former packs a decent punch and is very inconspicuous, slung under and just ahead of the elegant and sporty looking carbon bar set up. So punchy in fact, it’s the smallest bike light on the market to conform with the German StVZO standard.
All the cables are stowed away neatly, as is now the norm at this level, despite protestations from every mechanic on god’s earth. All told, you’d be hard pressed to spot if this was an ebike at all.
(Image credit: Future / Andy Carr)
The battery gives 292wh and is expandable for longer excursions, but that should equate to 2000m of climbing, and around 60km. With some careful planning, that’s a long day out, or a couple of legendary cols before you’re out of juice and on your own. The weight of all this is perhaps the most impressive stat on the sheet, at under 11kg for the bike I tested. The top spec one comes in comfortably under 10kg.
The conventional Endurace comes in loads of sizes, including a 2XS and 3XS with 650b wheels for smaller riders. I’m not sure Canyon gets enough credit for that, as it’s a remarkable outlier in the market. They also traditionally cater for a bigger rider also, and many of their models come in 62cm or equivalent, making the brand the only boxed bike option for many before going custom. Here in powered form, it offers the Endurace On:fly in just seven sizes from 2XS up to 2XL which is still better than many. And impressive given the niche this bike sits in.
Performance
I worked with a talented engineer called David Barnes for years on various custom frames, and he always used to say ‘slow is fast’. What he meant by that was that for us normal folk who aren’t hitting podiums at local crit races, detuned road bike geometry was always going to be fastest, and more pleasurable for most of us.
The Endurace:ONfly CF 8 features a relatively short, yet not overly short, wheelbase of 1016mm, with a head angle of 72 degrees and a trail value of 67mm. That is what David would call, slow but fast. Here it delivers some very stable handling, and whilst there is a bit of wheelflop, a slight hesitation, then a sense of some instability when the thing does turn, it’s not slow and after just a few rides you soon get used to its unflappable ride quality. Indeed, it starts to feel pretty effortless in terms of the thought required to manage the bike, and I suspect David was right all along, as the bike does feel like a very nippy bike, helped of course by the tail-wind provided by the TQ system.
(Image credit: Future / Andy Carr)
The seat post cushions the worst of the bumps, but despite having a frame full of strengthening plys to make room for battery doors, and various other e-clobber, the frame is also very comfortable in use. The bolted-together BB, complete with a motor that is only about the size of your fist, incidentally, feels very solid too. Despite the slow steering geometry, following a line is pleasant and flattering, rather than bland or vague.
(Image credit: Future / Andy Carr)
So to the motor. And this is the real story here, in that it’s brilliant. It doesn’t make e-bike sounds, somehow, and it hands over to your pedalling so smoothly that you can’t really tell when the assist is on or off. This is especially important if you’re racing your mates up a hill, killing them with your ghostly pro bike power, but then heading to the flat. On a heavier, or draggier system, you’d be getting slapped around on the flats as your mates stop fighting gravity, and start pushing on, nullifying your star performance on the climbs and making you wish you could jettison the extra weight.
Here is the place where e-bikes really needed to arrive, and in the Endurace:ONfly they certainly have. If you’ve tried e-road and hated it, I’d encourage you to go again, and get one of these to play with. Once you take the macho out of cycling, the idea of an eternal tail wind is wonderful, and in practice that’s exactly what it is. To those who say it’s cheating, I’d argue they’re missing the point somewhat as this is an enabling technology, not a scam.
(Image credit: Future / Andy Carr)
You can ride, as it says in the marketing, ‘Further and Faster’, and if you’re not racing anyone, where’s the harm in that? After all, people spend thousands to save a handful of watts, here you buy 200w, in one hit. And you don’t need to go near a wind tunnel to prove the benefits.
Riding this bike has been a huge amount of fun, flattering in all the good ways, enjoyable for the sheer lack of effort needed to turn over a good few miles with relative ease, and for the opportunity to get out on something new in cycling that actually moves the dial.
Value
And so to the cost. £6.5k is a big chunk of change for a bicycle. We cannot get away from that. My Ducati cost me a third of that, albeit at nearly 30 years old and in several bits so it’s not quite comparable, but bike pricing continues to make me blush, especially when I am asked to justify value.
If you take that obvious tension out of it, this bike represents exceptional value in a world where you can buy a bike with largely similar equipment, but without a motor and battery for the same kind of money from almost all the big brands. That’s madness, when you can get one that gives you a push surely?
But it’s that question, that tension in fact, that’s harming e-bike’s more than even Chinese imports that set your flat on fire, or the confusion between kit like this, and the Suron your take away delivery guy rides.
And if roadies could find it in themselves to forgive the sacrilege of giving up some of the suffering, for a slightly easier journey, this bike – with the incredible TQ system on board – would make a ton of sense, for literally hundreds of road-racing fans, who love a bit of cycling at the weekends. Far more so, I think, than a similarly priced conventional road bike and it’s probably more comfortable to boot.
Specs
- RRP: £6499 (as tested)
- Frame: Canyon Endurace:Onfly
- Size: M
- Weight: 10.97kg
- Groupset: Shimano Ultegra Di2
- Crankset: Praxis
- Wheels: DT Swiss ERC1400
- Tyres: Schwalbe Pro One TLE
- Brakes: Shimano Ultegra Hydraulic
- Bar/stem: Canyon
- Seatpost: Canyon with 20mm flex
- Saddle: Fizik Arione
Logbook
- Temperature: 10-36 degrees C
- Weather: Fair weather
- Road surface: UK A and B-roads
- Route: Tarmac, rolling hills, long flat sections
- Rides: 8+
- Mileage: 350km
