I’ve been spoiled by the automatic assist available on Bosch mid-drive motors. The next best thing is probably something like the Shimano Devore XT/SLX shifters on this Carbon, paired with the power monitoring. The 12-speed system, with a 10-51t cassette range, shifted at the speed of thought. Your handlebar display gives you a color-coded guide when you should probably shift up or down, based on your cadence and wattage output.
Credit:
Kevin Purdy
The controls for the Carbon’s display, power, and switch are just this little switch, with three places to press and an up/down switch. Sometimes I thought it was clever and efficient; other times, I wish I had picked a more simple unlock code.
Credit:
Kevin Purdy
That battery range, as reported by Specialized, is “up to 5 hours,” a number that few people are going to verify. It’s a 520-watt-hour battery in a 48-volt system that can turn out a rated 320 watts of power. You can adjust the output of all three assist levels in the Specialized app. And you can buy a $450 water-bottle-sized range extender battery that adds another 160 Wh to your system if you sacrifice a bottle cage (leaving two others).
But nobody should ride this bike, or its cousins, like a juice miser on a cargo run. This bike is meant to move, whether to speed through a commute, push an exercise ride a bit farther, or tackle that one hill that ruins your otherwise enjoyable route. The Carbon felt good on straightaways, on curves, starting from a dead stop, and pretty much whenever I was in the zone, forgetting about the bike itself and just pedaling.
I don’t have many points of comparison, because most e-bikes that cost this much are bulky, intensely powerful, or haul a lot of cargo. The Carbon and its many cousins that Specialized sells cost more because they take things away from your ride: weight, frame, and complex systems. The Carbon provides a rack, lights, three bottle cages, and mounting points, so it can do more than just boost your ride. But that’s what it does better than most e-bikes out there: provide an agile, lightweight athletic ride, upgraded with a balanced amount of battery power and weight to make that ride go faster or farther.