Bulls Vuca Evo AM 2: Snappy & delicate - with Pinion MGU & belt in the endurance test
Andreas Kern
· 29.11.2024
The great thing about Christmas? It always falls on the same day. From the First Advent at the latest, you count down the days until the Christ Child arrives. Anticipation is and remains the greatest joy. In the case of my long-term tester, the anticipation dragged on. And it dragged on. And dragged on. "Mid-March at the latest" became April. April became May and finally June. Christmas then fell on 2 July. And what can I say? It was definitely worth the wait! But first things first.
Permanent tester Andreas Kern works as a freelance touring author for BIKE. You can read some of his latest stories here:
Bulls Vuca Evo AM 2: Coveted technical fireworks
My new baby has the unsexy-sounding name Vuca Evo AM 2, but from the very first moment it turns the eyes not just of me, but of all my E-MTB-loving contemporaries. The first eye-catcher: harmonious (carbon) curves in all the right places and a dark complexion in an auspicious Dark Chrome Silver colour. The fat 38 mm Fox suspension fork with its squeaky orange exterior provides a stark counterpoint to the otherwise discreetly elegant look.
Second eye-catcher: the MGU motor from Pinion with integrated gearbox (tested here) and the belt drive. I've never had one. I grew up with a 26-inch bike, rigid fork and Hyperglide chain. I've torn off, riveted and replaced countless chains in 33 years. Now I want to know whether the carbon belt really only offers advantages.
Info & price: Bulls Vuca EVO AM 2 endurance tester at a glance
- Motor: Pinion E1.12 MGU (motor-gear unit) with belt drive
- 12 gears, 85 Nm torque, SmartShift (automatic; can be switched off)
- Battery: 720 Wh, removable; additional price with 960 Wh battery: 200 euros
- Carbon frame with aluminium rear triangle
- Sizes: S, M, L and XL
- Wheel size: 29 inch
- Suspension travel: 150 / 150 mm
- Weight: 25.29/26.39 kg (EMTB measurement, size L, 720/960 battery)
- Permissible total weight: 150 kg
- Price: 7999 Euro
Belt drive: maintenance and care-free at last?
First promise: maintenance and care-free. That would be right up my street! What's more, there's no more rear derailleur that adjusts or shears off on rough rock contact. Just in case, Bulls tamer Friedemann Schmude hands me a replacement belt. Just in case the carbon belt should snap. Doesn't necessarily boost my confidence. In any case, I'm curious to see how I'll get an endless belt into the rear triangle if the worst comes to the worst ... But don't worry, bike!
The electric gods have put work before pleasure. The Fit Bike app needs to be downloaded and paired with the bike via a QR code on the key ring. Which, after a dozen unsuccessful attempts, finally succeeds.
With the Bulls, the smartphone can be used as a central control and rolling centre. The mobile phone is plugged into the stem using the SP Connect system, rotated 90 degrees - and it holds! The iPhone works perfectly as a display. But what do you do when a call comes in?
But what annoys me is a constantly popping up error message ("Wire Communication Error"). According to Bulls, I can ignore it and push it away. I just trust that I won't experience a cable fire at an altitude of 3000 metres ...
A mountain e-bike, consistently rethought. Just a little overweight
Off to the first ride! One day after the ceremonial unboxing. First impression after the visual check: pretty heavy, this baby! So off to the scales. Almost 27 kilos ready to ride is quite an announcement. But I'm not a heavy rider either. So the system weight - including the heavy 35-litre Evoc photo backpack - adds up and approaches the 140-kilo mark. Just as well that the Bulls is suitable for 150 kilos. Saddle up, initialise the system by pressing the button on the top tube, connect it to your mobile phone - and off you go on a wild ride.
The Bulls is intuitive to ride, even without spending hours studying the instruction manual (online). The rocker switch on the left selects the E-assist mode - Off, Eco, Flow, Flex and Fly. The gear lever on the right selects one of twelve gears: Upshift with short, light pressure on the front lever, downshift using the rear lever. If this doesn't suit you, simply change the shift direction.
Snappy & smooth: barely noticeable gear changes with the Pinion MGU
What is immediately noticeable: the gear change is snappy, fast and almost imperceptible. You can only feel the shifting between fourth and fifth as well as eighth and ninth gear, and almost not at all in all other gears. This is where the integration of the motor, transmission and software (and Pinion's automotive genes) comes into its own.
Speaking of software: Fit E-Bike is not exactly the most original name for an app, but it is one thing above all: intuitive. The bike can be locked in a flash, the tyre pressure measured, the MGU - the aforementioned motor-gearbox unit - configured to personal preferences and the route beamed from Komoot to the mobile phone display.
But between you and me: I don't need any of that. I just sit up, couple my bike and iPhone and ride my home circuit. Over and over again. I also want to test the different support levels, their performance differences and their influence on power consumption. But in reality, I just want to push my new-fangled carbon-belt baby to the maximum in the minimum amount of time.
Torture me, you bastard! Collecting metres in altitude with the Bulls
My favourite torture route leads from the ski jump in Partenkirchen (not Garmisch!) up to the Osterfelder summit station. That's 16 kilometres and 1300 metres in altitude at full throttle. No time for man and machine to rest for a moment. To all those outside: 57 minutes 46 from the entrance to the Olympic base to the summit station terrace must be beaten! I'm excited.
In July, I cycle the Olympic training centre-Osterfelder route six times. In all support modes. Interesting: I need one hour 13 for the 16 kilometres and 1300 metres of altitude in Flow mode and still have 23 percent battery at the top. Still 18 per cent in Fly mode. I would have expected to have significantly more juice left in the battery in Flow mode than in Fly mode.
But actually, the matter seems clear to me: in the 16 minutes that I'm travelling longer in flow mode, the motor naturally also sucks juice. Long story short: I've been riding consistently in fly mode since this mode test. I could safely remove the rocker switch on the left. Fly has noticeably more oomph, is the most fun, and it doesn't matter whether the battery is empty after 1500 or 1700 metres in altitude.
The decisive factor for me as a touring cyclist is a second battery anyway. And that - a fat 960! - I get on 29 July. From now on, I should never think about premature juicing again. A 960 battery on the bike and the old 720 in my rucksack - that's how I manage 3500 metres of altitude without a power socket. Brave new e-bike world! But then everything turns out differently ...
Risen from the dead - and full throttle into the golden autumn
Friedemann from Bulls installs the new 960 battery at the bottom of my down tube in the hallowed halls of the BIKE editorial office, switches it back on and nothing happens. The bike is dead. Cause of death: unknown. Even the plugged-in diagnostic computer virtually shrugs its shoulders. The Vuca has to go home to Bulls to be resuscitated. The good thing about the bad: At least the bike died in the warm workshop in Munich, not on a draughty three-thousand metre peak.
A week later, it came back from the dead. The culprit: a faulty connecting cable in the frame. But now everything is fresh again, the great altitude metre eating can continue. My plan: I want to collect not 50,000, but 100,000 metres of altitude by June 2025. There are enough test pieces around Garmisch: Hohe Kiste, Heimgarten, Schachen.
And back home in the Allgäu, THE executioner par excellence awaits in midsummer: the Nebelhorn. The steepest ramp in Germany ends at the highest accessible point in Germany. The Bulls whisks me to the summit cross in under an hour.
Up the Nebelhorn in an hour, in the Alps up to over 3000 metres
At the beginning of September, my baby and I collected a handful of three-thousand metre peaks around Bormio. Since then, the Bulls has almost certainly been the highest travelled E-MTB in the Alps: 3285 metres. Failures, defects, hiccups? Apart from the error message in the display described above and the cable damage: nothing dramatic.
The rear 203 mm brake disc takes the ultra-long descents (and my weight) at some point, while the front disc - 220 mm in diameter - doesn't budge a millimetre.
At the Bocca di Profa at an altitude of 2663 metres, I have to repair my first puncture on a carbon belt bike. It works a little differently than with a chain bike, but it works. I'm as curious as a carbon belt as to whether it will break at some point ...
Project 100,000 vertical metres underway! After four months, the Bulls Vuca EVO AM 2 has covered almost 30,000 metres of altitude. And apart from the one cable glitch, it's proving to be excellent. We'll keep you up to date on how the carbon-belt e-MTB performs when collecting metres of altitude in the Alps.
Permanent tester Andreas Kern works as a freelance touring author for BIKE. You can read some of his latest stories here:
